November blusters in...

Let me introduce you to my sunlamp.  It's not even remotely as bright or as hot as the sun.  In fact, I think my iMac gets hotter in about a quarter of the time, but that's for another day.  Back to the sunlamp. It's pretty bright.  Bright enough that I have it angled slightly away so it isn't right in my eyes or I see spots for a long time.  Bright enough to make me forget (until I turn it off) that I've entered the land of murk and there I will reside for long enough to make me think once or twice about leaving.


Not seriously, of course.  Well, maybe to parts south for a long weekend.  But I promise to come back.


I'm pretty surprised no one has compiled one of those "You know it when..." deals for the Puget Sound/Cascade mountain foothills.  Like, "You Know it's November in the Cascade foothills when the sun gets dramatically sucked out of the sky and is replaced by a layer of clouds so thick you begin to doubt there ever was a sun to begin with."  Oh, wait.  That might be part of my sci-fi for NaNo breaking through. See, the brain melt starts.


The problem is, I like the sun.  I don't like sunburn, or heat waves in the consistent 100s (so glad not to have been part of the East Coast Bakedown this past summer).  But I like seeing it through the window.  I like knowing it's out there.  And it always makes me feel guilty when it leaves and I haven't appreciated it enough.  But I doubt I'll do better next year.  


So I feel like hibernating but I can't.  Because today is Day One of NaNoWriMo and I'm finding my novel writing groove.  900 words into scene one and I changed my mind already on a bit character I wanted to be a little more smug, a little more thoughtless toward the "lesser people".  Eh, the little darlings run away from me as quickly as I can set their little feet on the paper.  Which reminds me, time to crank the lamp up another notch, pretend it's really only September out there, and wrap the leash around my wrist as my characters drag me down the block.

Words and Jazz

I've always wanted to be really good at playing the piano.  Good.  Like, throw out a few bars of Beethoven-good.  The keyboard above has been in my possession more than eleven years now.  My husband bought it for me a couple of days after we married; he still loves to indulge me in my creative endeavors.  

My keyboard sits downstairs on a table, played somewhat by my husband and tinkered with by my kids.  The three year old loves hitting the demo button and dancing to all the snippets of music thrown about.  But I don't play.  I want to be good.  Immediately.  Unrealistically.

This problem with realism hasn't filtered through to my writing.  Instead, I'm a little too ruthless when it comes to getting it right.  I'm homicidal when something's not working to my liking and the trunk novels are piling up.  They aren't "there" yet.  But I'm not putting my laptop on a desk somewhere and leaving it sit for eleven years.  I'm not expecting to write like yet.  I'm not even going to write like some of the talented and rising soon-to-be authors I've encountered over the last couple of years.  I'm going to write like me.  And keep going until I can stand up with the rest of them.   

NaNoWriMo is days away from starting and my outline is done, character's are a little less blob like.  I'm excited to be working on a more sci-fi oriented idea. 

I've got my cool NaNo tote to protect my laptop when I slosh through late autumn in Western Washington.  I've got Scrivener 2.0 downloaded and already being the efficient organizing and writing program it is. (Only used for free by me until Literature and Latte give me a buy button to clicky)  I've got at least 2 boxes of K-cups in various flavors so I can avoid a distracting run to the local espresso stand.  Well, some of them anyway. 

Ending my post with another piano mention: tonight is Word Jazz in the Snoqualmie Valley and I'm eager to cheer on my fellow peeps in our terrific writer's group.  They've got a million times more guts than I do for getting behind a mic and reading 2,000 words.  Out loud.  In public.  *Thud*