I Wrote a Novel, Now What?

I am very happy to say I did it - and with two hours to spare. After pounding out 9000+ words of mediocre fiction I have successfully completed my first NaNoWriMo and quit for the day today at 50,388 words, according to the official word counter. My book still lacks a title, and I'm guessing it's going to take another 20,000 words or so to finish telling the story. BUT - it feels good. And Grant says, "I'm looking forward to having my wife back." Fair enough.

We are newly back in Bozeman after a week in Western Washington with my family. Advent is upon us and there is MUCH to do, like there always is. The discipline of writing has been good for me, though, and a facebook friend from another life participated in National Blog Writing Month during November - a post a day for a month - and it sounds like it might be fun. But maybe I'll wait til January for that...

Now, some sleep...

Procrastination Station

One of the best parts of signing up for National Novel Writing Month, besides actually writing a novel (I hit the 19,000 word mark last night, and hope to be at 25,000 words before I go to bed on Sunday night), is the NaNoWriMo website. It rocks. Just about all of it is accessible to everyone, though to post in the forums you need to register, which also implies you're writing a book. ANYWAY - one of my favorite sections, of course, is the "Procrastination Station." Every day or two, two new links to wonderful websites and opportunities to avoid writing are posted. Yesterday I discovered wordle, and if you haven't seen it yet, go check it out. You can paste in a bunch of text (like your whole novel so far, or a sermon, or anything) and it generates a word cloud based upon it. The most frequently used words are the biggest, on down to pretty small type for the least frequently used words. You can change the font, the color, the orientation of the words. Super fun! Plus, you can use what you create any way you want - I'm thinking there are some uber-groovy t-shirts in our youth group's future!

Here's an example: this is the wordle of the top 150 words from my Consecration Sunday sermon from last year (Grant's preaching at Commitment Sunday this year. Pray for him - it's this week!)

Vote Yes on Referendum 71, Or whichever legislation to protect GLBT rights is up for vote near your house

My friends Heidi and Jen are in this ad filmed by the ALCU in Seattle. (Heidi's one of my best friends from college - we were roommates our junior and senior years). Heidi and Jen are domestic partners, and have had "Domestic Partnership Rights" in Washington State- meaning that should something happen to one of them, the other would have access to her partner's pension. All that could change if voters refect Referendum 71. So if you're in Washington, vote YES! And if you live somewhere else, please vote yes to maintain or grant domestic partnership rights in your area (or vote no, if the legislation is worded the other way around). Thanks!