What’s shocking me right this second is the calendar.  Specifically, where we stand on the calendar.

Ladies and gentlemen, we stand on the cusp of the end of October, which means we are a mere screaming toboggan ride away from November.  Those of you who have been reading for awhile may remember that last year during the month of November, I embarked on a ridiculous journey.  A journey to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words from start to finish during the month of November.

That journey was NaNoWriMo.  It was difficult.  I was running two different blogs part-time in addition to my blog, and writing additional content at the same time for my novel.  There were times when I thought my very joints would keep me awake with their incessant aches, and somewhere right around 24,000 words I started wondering if I could finish at all.

But I did.  I crested that hill and the view was mighty indeed.  The novel’s pure crap, but it exists.  Thanks to NaNoWriMo I can say without hedging that I’ve written a novel.  It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and I remember it with fondness.

The big question then becomes: What about this year?  November starts in four days, will November 2009 yield Crap Novel 2.0?

No, no it will not.

It breaks my heart, but a woman’s got to know her limits.  I’m not running more blogs this year than I was last year, but the nature of those blogs and of my work for them has changed dramatically.  When I worked for Qvisory, I wrote one post a week and merely managed the content for the other four posts that went live.

For Offbeat Mama, I’m writing 3-4 posts a week.  It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but when you’re writing for a large audience you want to make sure your content is solid.  My name goes on those posts, and I’d prefer it strongly if they weren’t crap.

In addition to the Offbeat Mama posts, I still write 3-4 posts a week over here in addition to one post a week for Bottle Your Brand.  In short, I’m already producing a substantial amount of content every week, none of which is for a novel.

I guess you could factor being pregnant in there somewhere as well.  I will admit that nesting has taken over an alarming proportion of our weekend to-do list, and whereas I used to fantasize about sitting down and writing during the weekend, now I distract myself by imagining which projects we can complete given our resources, budget, and weather.

In short, it’s just not going to work out this year.  That’s ok, though, because next year is only twelve months away!  And I’ll have an eight month old baby hanging around then, so that’ll make writing a novel in a month easier!

Ten bucks says my NaNoWriMo novel next year will be about a woman who eats nothing but potato chips and cheesecake during her pregnancy, gains 15 pounds total the whole time, and never misses a wink of sleep thanks to her miraculous infant who rarely fusses and instead just smiles and coos all the time.

Obviously it will qualify as a “Fantasy” novel.

Granted, the idea of re-writing my 250+ page novel makes me want to cry just a little, but the more I go back and re-read it the more dissatisfied I become.  I’m not the kind of writer who normally feels dissatisfied with her work.  I’ll go back to old blog posts and most of the time I’m surprised I actually wrote them because I like them so much (I know, I’ve got the modesty thing down to a science).

With all the new skills I’m learning though, I’m slowly realizing how much better my novel could be.  Whereas before I would read it over and think to myself how good it was and how well I detailed the characters, I now read it over and realize that my characters have no faces and my story has a plot that’s neither well-developed nor resolved.

Normally, this would probably make me toss the whole thing out and start over but I’m still in love with this story and want to tell it.  I just now realize that I can do it so much better.  The trick, I think, is going to be to tell the story from a 3rd person instead of  a 1st person perspective.

My whole novel as it stands is written in present tense 1st person, which means my sentences are always happening right this second.  For example: I’m writing my blog when Wes walks in and gives me a hug. 

What I think would be a lot better would be 3rd person omniscient.  For example: She sat at the computer, face scrunched in concentration, typing madly to the sounds of Beethoven when Wes walked in and interrupted her with a hug.

I can give my characters faces, personality quirks, and a deeper depth of character with 3rd person than if I’m shackled to the perspective of one person who’s only in one place at one time.  Also, 1st person present tense gets a bit tiring to read (and write!) after a while.

Apparently, I’m in good company in writing my first novel in 1st person.  According to my good friend Working Girl, most first novels are written in 1st person.  The woman who teaches my writing class says that most publishing houses won’t even take a look at novels written in 1st person since they practically scream AMATEUR AUTHOR!

The last thing I want is to be that obvious about my amateur status, so I think I’ll give a different perspective a try.  I’m sure there are plenty of authors who can make 1st person look good but I’m not yet arrogant enough to assume I’m one of them.  The great thing about having already written a rough draft is that I have an excellent grasp of my story and my characters so I have the feeling the second draft is going to just pour out of me.

Now, the dilemma is: Will I have time to revise my novel before next NaNoWriMo?  I’m so busy lately I really question whether I’ll carve out the time to do this until I’m forced to do it by a voluntary deadline.  If I do have to wait until November, at least I’ll know what I’m writing about ahead of time!

My novel is now sitting pretty at 50,118 words and still going strong. I have officially won NaNoWriMo and the conclusion to my gripping tale of 20-somethingness is clearly in sight.

There will be brownies!

Now, though. Now I’m painfully available. I got a phone call yesterday, about five seconds after I got home and picked up my new cell phone, and I had to tell the person I’d call her back because I was so annoyed that someone would have the gall to call me. I know, nice right?

I’ve been very insulated, and I’m ashamed to admit I’ve really enjoyed the peace. Technically, I can still turn the ringer off on my phone, but it’s too tempting to know that all I would have to do is grab my phone to check my emails. I’ve programmed my phone to alert me when I have new emails by chiming a soft little chime, so now I don’t have to check it every five seconds, but I’m so obsessive that sometimes I just check it even if I haven’t heard the chime, if only to make sure it works.

Last night, I was working and I had my new cell phone on the desk next to me. It blinked red every five seconds, letting me know I had new messages and emails, and I may have told it to stop being so pushy and mind its own business already.

Clearly, my new cellular friend and I have boundary issues.

After much tinkering, I have figured out how to customize the amount of hooplah I want surrounding new messages and emails. This helps a great deal, as I am now able to concentrate enough to actually get work done. It’s amazing how distracting a cell phone can be sometimes!

Now is an especially bad time to be getting distracted. I have a mere 700 words, wait, let me emphasize this, A MERE 700 WORDS separating me from NaNoWriMo victory. Imagine my frustration this morning when I had to break from my writing early and fold laundry.

Poor Wes happened to wander upstairs as I was folding and had to withstand my delirious assertions that laundry was an inferior way to spend my time as it was definitely not going to be getting me published anytime soon. Unless I wrote laundry memoirs or something. Which could be a good idea for later.

Unless something terrible happens, tomorrow I will fall, twitching and spasming, across the finish line of National Novel Writing Month. I will raise my tortured fingers to the sky and dance a jig. I will shout my victory to the foggy heavens. I will eat brownies. Oh yes, there will be brownies.

The funny thing is, I still haven’t come up with a title for the book. Perhaps I’ll call it “Of Ibuprofen and Joint Pain” or “Write Club”. I assume that book titles usually have something to do with the story, but really, convention exists if only to be challenged, yes? If in the throes of novel-completion-inspired euphoria I decide to name my novel “Cheese,” who’s to say I’m in the wrong?

One. Whole. Week.

Things I have learned this week:

• My drive to and from work is a lot longer if I don’t spend it talking to people
• Wes and I have a lot of conversations throughout the day that help break up my stress. I miss those, even though the conversations don’t tend to be terribly momentous
• I feel a lot less accessible, and a bit isolated
• In the absense of a phone, I will check my emails four times as often
• I’m a teensy bit more patient when I have stuff I need to talk to Wes about because I no longer have the ability to call him the minute I think of something

We just learned today that it could be another two weeks before my new phone gets here and I must admit, that thought leaves me winded. Jimminy freaking cricket! I have not been without a cell phone for this long since I was twelve. Not even when we were in Israel was I without a cell phone for this long.

Every time someone wants to call me, they have to call Wes’ phone! This is all well and good, except he actually uses it for his job so shared custody is tenuous at best.

In looking at it for a second, I am reminded that my cell phone absense comes in the middle of the time I have set aside for NaNoWriMo. Perhaps this is the Universe’s way of telling me to be less distracted and get back to work on my novel! Well, I would hate for the Universe to start using stronger tactics, so I’ll take the hint and keep typing, just in a different place.

I cracked 35,000 words this morning, though, so the end is dimly in sight. I have over 70 pages written (by Microsoft Word’s reckoning) and my brain continues to burst with new ideas. Wish me luck as I continue typing my little face off and ignorng the calls and voicemails I can’t access!

I made it through the first week and I have 21,171 words to show for it. My story is moving right along, my characters are developing and becoming so real to me that I can sometimes hear their voices, and my fingers hurt to high heaven every single day. I have faith that I will finish this story and that the joints of my hands will be the worse for it.

In related joint-issue news, Wes and I received our Blackberries yesterday and they were, true to form, teeny tiny. Wes went to the trouble of setting up my Pearl for me before we realized that they sent me the wrong model (I need a Wi-Fi capable phone and this one wasn’t up to snuff).

The trouble is, I already set up my email account on it, my ringtones, and my menu options. I’d already programmed my quick access keys on the left and right and set the background to be a picture of Doc. Now, I’ll have to do all thirty minutes of set-up all over again, and suffer the indignity of only being able to type out half of my email address without my thumbs hurting.

It turns out, however, that this was a blessing in disguise. Since I already have to return the Pearl, I took a test drive on Wes’ Curve to find out if I liked it better. I do. The Pearl combines letters in weird duos on the keys and then forces you to choose which option you mean. For instance, if you hit the key with “AD” on it, a little menu pops up and you have to select whether you meant A or D.

As a writer, I find all the constant double-checking vexing. I am almost always intentional when I type things, dang it, and I don’t need some namby-pamby Pearl asking me if I mean to write what I type out.

The Curve has a full keyboard, even though the keyboard is only suitable for infants and puppies to use because it’s so small, and I vastly prefer that to the insanely convoluted checks-and-balances system of the Pearl. Now all I have to do is go for at least a week without a phone and pretend it doesn’t bother me!

I bet you’re so glad I took the time to write all this out because you’re all just dying to know what I think about handheld cellular devices. What can I say? I labor under the mistaken assumption that the minutiae of my life interests other people and apparently too few people have gone to the trouble to correct my misinformation.

Now, alas, I’m going to do the dishes and go to bed because my wrists are hurting like an unmentionable word and I want to sleep so they’ll stop. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, though, that involves chocolate, sleeping, and all things that are good.

I have a little over 10,000 words done so far and I’m having a blast! Writing a novel is bizarre, it’s really it’s own kind of beast. I keep thinking I’m going to take the story one way and it squirts out from under my hand and goes in a completely different direction. New characters pop out in unexpected places, characters I thought I was going to develop lose shape and write themselves out of the story, and new plot turns surprise the crap out of me and my characters.

I’m also getting lost in the story more than is likely good for me. If I start writing and then leave to go somewhere, chances are excellent that I’ll be a total space-cadet while I’m there because my head’s still in the story. Wes and I were nearly mute in the car today because his head was stuck in his music, my head was stuck in my story, and the two of us were physically two feet apart but a million miles away mentally.

Who knew that writing a novel could be so hazardous?

I’m having an absolute blast, though, and I’m finding that the more I write the easier it is. It was the same way with blogging. When I first started it was tough to figure out ideas for new posts. Now, I have too many ideas and my blog posts end up a mile long!

Same with the novel. At first I felt self-conscious and a lot like a poser, but now the story is literally flowing through me and my fingers can’t seem to keep up (I feel really cheesy in writing that. Feel free to Boo me in the comments section if you agree).

Oh! And the best part is the shopping. My main character is planning a wedding, which means I get to go dress shopping all over again. Paradise, I tell you!

Now, if I could only figure out how to turn off my brain so I can get to sleep at night that would be ideal. Oh, and also how to get my fingers to stop hurting, too. Do they make tiny little Ace bandages for knuckles, I wonder?

This rather silly combination of words stands for National Novel Writing Month. November is the month, and the goal is to produce a novel of at least 50,000 words by the end of November, starting tomorrow.

50,000 words, do you realize that that’s 1,667 words every day for 30 days? My average blog post is about 600 words, so this is really going to be pushing it for me. I’m excited, though, because this is something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a wee child and knowing that I’m undertaking the task in the company of so many people is comforting.

It is going to be really difficult, though, let’s not kid ourselves here. I’m juggling the writing for three blogs, working 50 hours a week, and even after three years of marriage I still really like spending time with my husband, so squeezing in the time for writing 1,667 words every day is going to be really hard.

If nothing else, it’ll be an opportunity to prove to my very persistent friend that I can make good on my assurances that I really would like to write a novel. He’s going to be holding me accountable and I hope all of you will as well. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually finish the novel, someone will want to publish it, and then people will actually pay to read my writing…What a ridiculous thought!