Unlike last week, when I think Fall Break had something to do with all of the excitement, I'm not so excited anymore. I'm feeling overwhelmed at the thought of writing 50,000 words in 30 days -- What am I? Crazy? Uh, yes.

All of my professors thought it would be really nice of them if we had papers due in November instead of December "when all of the other professors will be having papers due." Yes, normally, that would be helpful. Except when ALL of your professors have that mentality. It's silliness. But last year I survived all of my homework while writing, and surprisingly, finished most of it early and better than I ever would have had I not been NaNo-ing. So, we'll see. Maybe all this anxiety is for nothing.

While I'm here complaining, I wanted to let you know a couple of things that are much more important than all of that:

First, I added something to the blog on the left called Good Search. It's a search engine, powered by Yahoo!, that gives a penny to the charity of your choice for every search you perform. It doesn't seem like a lot, but coming from a fundraising job, I know that every little bit helps more than anyone ever thinks, and if every NaNo participant used Good Search for all of November, they would have enough money to pay for several of their programs just from searching. So, naturally I'm pushing the NaNo cause, but really it's great to donate to any charity that you support. If you want to support Novel Writing Month, simply choose "The Office of Letters and Light" as your charity. Thanks.

I've been reading a lot of things about NaNo on their website, which is really a wealth of information. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this yet, because I don't know how many people would be interested, but they have an Author Sponsorship program, where people could sponsor my novel just like a marathon. Obviously, if I decide to do it, I'll post all of the information here.

Also! Last year, Jackie and I stayed up until the sun came up one weekend during November in a crazy attempt to really up our word counts. We were tired afterwards, but it definitely worked. Apparently, NaNo had their own version of this (and why wouldn't they?) called Write-a-thon. It's a little less intense because they only stay up until midnight, but on November 17th, a bunch of novel writers get together and write like crazy for six hours while people sponsor them. I won't be able to do it then for a bunch of reasons, but I'm really excited to attempt another stay-up-until-the-sun-comes-up extravaganza.

I really must be going to prepare for Halloween parties galore this weekend. And, if there's any time, I can use the rest of October to get ahead on homework, papers, and all of the school that will be getting in the way of my masterpiece. Wish me luck! and Happy Halloween! and I'll see you in November!

NaNoWriMo is almost here! Just 2 weeks to go, and I can hardly wait. I've been waiting impatiently since some time around February when I thought of a brilliant idea for my novel. I have been trying so hard not to overthink it and get myself into that rut where I care about how it comes out too much to actually finish, and so far, I've been pretty successful.

My novel does already have a title - My Life in Funerals - that came with the idea. I've been doing a little feeling around on the topic so I don't run out of things to say during the course of November but no formal planning. I'm not really an outlining kind of girl, and I know from experience that too much trying will probably cause my downfall before I even begin. As opposed to my last attempt, this one will be pure, 100% real fiction. I haven't written something like that since...perhaps tenth grade. So this is a big deal.

And, as I've just edited this thing about six times before publishing it, I've just realized how glad I am for this outlet to somehow edit during this upcoming craziness of quantity-over-quality. Ah! Thank you, blog. Anyways, I'll see you all again at the one week mark!