Thanks for waiting for me for the past couple of months. I needed a break. Being responsible for a conference seems to be more taxing than it used to be – it must be that I’m getting older. Nah. That can’t be it.

Up until the past few years, my philosophy has always been Full Speed Ahead. Up until the past few years, I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, slow down. I accepted more and more responsibilities, and took on new ones as other came close to ending. The WCCW conference was just one of many items on my plate this summer, and my writing mojo just shut down. I’m realizing that nothing runs at full speed all the time. So, I stopped and refueled my brain.

This week an old friend came into town and called, ‘just to find out why you hadn’t posted to the blog lately’. His timing was perfect, because I’ve got a head full of things I want to write about and realized I’m refreshed and ready to get back to it.

Winter is approaching, and that’s when I do more of my writing – when it’s too cold or blustery to go out and do anything else. It’s good thing I have a day job – I couldn’t make a living, writing like that.

I hope all of you had good conferences to attend, contests to enter, managed to get something completed or published in the past few months. But NaNoWriMo is upon us. Have you joined this national fad? In case you’ve been living off the grid for a few years, National Novel Writing Month is November, where the goal is to write 50K words in the month. The site listed below has the details. You will find on-line and local support groups for those that elect to accept the challenge, or you can simply do it yourself. Whatever works for you.  http://nanowrimo.org/

You are not expected to have a polished, coherent, edited-and-ready-for-publication work completed. The point is to force yourself to write with abandon, without worrying about how the final piece comes out. I have friends who have done it several years in a row. A few are now editing and rewriting their original work. A few are just glad they got through it. And others are going at it again this year.

I haven’t tried it - it’s good to know your limitations. I know I can’t devote the time necessary to write 50,000 words in 30 days – that’s a little less than 1675 a day, every day. I’d probably try to lump it into weekend work, but wow(!) – that’s 11,666.69 words ( how do you get .69 words? Stop in the middle of one?) in a weekend, and, well, nope. I’m tired just thinking about that (and doing all that math…). My friends? They shake their heads and say, “excuses, excuses.”

You know that 2-month hiatus I took? I’m not quite ready for Full Speed Ahead yet. Just a slow and steady return. But I’m working on it….