To Writers: The benefits of living with a cat

The title of this post should be: The benefits of a cat allowing you to live with him/her.

Muriel Spark writes:

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp. The light from a lamp ... gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.
- Writing Advice From History's Fastest, Most Prolific Authors

So there you have it. The tranquility of a cat will help inspire you and improve your productivity. Sounds good! Honestly, though, my two cats are better at putting me to sleep. Especially when I sit down on the couch, notepad in hand, and they decide to climb on my lap. I start petting them and, the next thing I know, I've been asleep for an hour!

Perhaps, though, you'll have success with this method. It's something worth trying.

Six reasons to keep writing

I woke up today and didn't want to write. I wanted to do anything but write. I felt, What's the use, it's never been a happen, I'm never going to be able to earn a significant portion of my living from my writing. But I know with that sort of attitude only one thing is guaranteed: I'm guaranteed to fail. So I wrote this blog post with myself in mind.

1. You owe it to yourself.

If earning your living from writing is your dream, the only way your dream is going to come true is if you keep at it. There's only one person who can make your dream come true: You. Remember, if this were easy then everyone would be doing it. There's a reason they're not.

2. If you try you will succeed.

I'm not saying that if you try you'll get rich, or that you try you will be able to earn enough money from your writing to quit your day job – that would be nice, though! What will happen is that you won't have given up on your dream and, yes this sounds corny, but that's success. You'll be a writer. There's a reason why the phrase, 'starving writer,' trips off the tongue so easily.

3. If you don't try, you'll always wonder, 'what if?'

They say that at the end of life as you look back at what you've done, what you've accomplished, you don't regret the things you did, you regret the things you didn't do. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds right to me.

4. It's a marathon, not a sprint

You've heard this one before. Personally, I think it's like a series of triathlons!

5. Variety is the spice of life

When you get bored, try something new. Something I'm trying out is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I hadn't heard about this software until a couple of weeks ago when I came across a number of author blogs talking about the fantastic results they had been getting with it. (No, this is not advertisement for Dragon NaturallySpeaking!)

When I picked up the software last week, I thought that this might be a way of getting another half hour per day to write. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to work, but if I could use a digital recorder to dictate parts of my story, perhaps even a blog post, I could squeeze another 30 from the day.

I haven't tried that yet, but something unexpected has happened. This new way of writing – perhaps I can't, or shouldn't, call this writing; perhaps I should call it speaking – has made the words come easier, has reinvigorated me.

One thing Dragon NaturallySpeaking had been excellent for is transcribing my longhand notes. Often when I get an idea for a story I write it out longhand and these notes can run to hundreds of pages! Over the past few days I have been faced with the task of typing in about 50 or 60 pages of notes, something that takes me a long time to do. Last night, using Dragon, I transcribed the lion share of my notes in about half an hour! Perhaps it's the novelty that made it seem effortless – and fun! – But it seemed to go much faster, and I'm a fast typist.

6. Bribery works

I love books, especially journals. New journals. Over my lifetime I've filled bookcases with journals covered in my scribbling. (And, no, I'm not a serial killer!) For me, if I need special motivation, I tell myself, "Self, all you need to do is fill up this journal and you can buy yourself a new one." And, believe it or not this often works.

Okay, I don't know about you, but it's NaNoWriMo time and I'm all fired up to write! Talk to you tomorrow. :)

(PS: I wrote this post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.)

I'm Listed on Technorati.com!

I don't know why I'm so thrilled by seeing my blog listed on Technorati.com, but I am! I have a tiny, tiny authority of 109 (authority measures a site's standing & influence in the blogosphere and is a number from 1 to 1000, 1000 being most influential), but that's okay.

I would encourage anyone with a blog to list it with Technorati.com. The process is quick and painless and, somehow, very rewarding. Here's how you go about it.

For anyone who is curious, I haven't noticed a significant increase in traffic to my site (technorati is a search engine for blogs) but I just got listed, so who knows?

10 Excuses That Prevent You From Ever Becoming Great

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We all make excuses, excuses that keep us from doing those things we want to do, perhaps even those things we <i>need</i> to do.

Reaching for our dreams is risky because, to achieve them, we would have to make ourselves vulnerable.

Each of us has a special fear, but a big one for writers is rejection, having agents and editors -- and, ultimately the reading public -- tell us our writing is dreadful and our ideas unworthy of the hard drive space they're stored in.

Let's identify the excuses we use and ditch them.

(The following list was made by Tommy Walker, see below.)

1. You can’t afford to take a risk right now.

If not now, then when?

This excuse is fear of the unknown.

The reality is, you can’t afford <i>not</i> to take a risk right now.

If an idea really benefits people, pulling on the reigns doesn’t just inhibit your progress…it prevents people from improving their lives.

2. Someone else is already doing it.

Which came first, Copyblogger or Problogger? Dyson or Hoover? Groupon or LivingSocial?

Does it matter?

Not really.

3. You don’t know where to begin.

The human brain isn’t designed to process information in a linear fashion.

This is why when you dream, it doesn’t start “at the beginning” and you only remember how the dream ended, but never how it began.

If you’re looking to pick up a new skill, usually “the beginning” will make itself apparent, regardless of where you start.

Even better, because the way you process information is unique to you, your “starting point” could help you form a very unique perspective that people love.

Also consider the other people who “don’t know where to begin.”

By simply picking a place and chronicling your journey, you can inspire others to learn with you.

4. You’re afraid of what your colleagues will say.

Peer validation is rarely the deciding factor in any entrepreneurial story worth hearing.

If you’re concerned with what your industry peers will think, don’t worry about it.

Sometimes disruption is exactly what your peers need.

5. Nobody will buy.

If people will buy the “Pet Rock” people will buy what you’re selling.

You just have to figure out how to position yourself, and why they need you.

6. You haven’t done it before.

This is my favorite excuse, because it’s such a cop out.

Let’s look at some of the common milestones in your life that you got through just fine

- You went to school (hadn’t done that before)
- Had your first kiss (hadn’t done that before)
- Learned to drive a car
- Took up a new hobby
- Learned to read

Or really anything beyond lying on your back and flailing your limbs uncontrollably.

You hadn’t done anything before you did it. It’s simple, but it’s true.

This excuse is rooted in fear of the unknown.

Now it’s perfectly fine to be afraid, but “inexperience” is by far one of the worst excuses.

Life is built on a series of “firsts” and making the choice to limit your experiences only leads to dissatisfaction.

7. You’ll get to it later.

No you won’t. You never do.

Get to it now, or at least schedule it to get done.

Then do it.

You’ll be a lot more satisfied when you’re finished.

8. You don’t want to be boring.

What’s boring to some is addictive to others.

People process information differently. If you skew towards boring it’s entirely possible to still find the right audience.

However if you skew towards boring, and you don’t want to, find <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-be-interesting/">ways to become more interesting</a>.

Take an improv class, do some live Q&A’s, go bungee jumping… spice it up.

9. If you can’t get it right the first time, why bother trying?

Perfection is a myth.

Nobody actually “does it right”. That’s why there are so many grocery stores, soda brands, religions, and blogs.

It’s not about “doing it right” so much as it is doing it to the best of your ability.

Giving it everything you’ve got, regardless of the outcome, that’s the only way to do it right.

10. Failure would destroy you.

Anyone who’s ever “made it” will tell you they’ve failed more times than they’ve succeeded.

Being destroyed by failure is a choice; the choice is to quit.

If you fail, fail.

Give it everything you’ve got, and let it become a disaster.

Watch it burn.Let it destroy you.

Then recoup, learn from your mistakes, and rise from the ashes.

Failure never completely destroys you, only the parts that weren’t doing you any good.

With every catastrophic failure, hindsight allows you to see where you went wrong.

When you rebuild, you’re that much closer to perfecting the system.

This list of 10 was taken from Tommy Walker's article, 106 Excuses That Prevent You From Ever Becoming Great.

Excuse number 7 is one I use all the time. Today I'm not going to procrastinate, I'm doing it now. (I don't quite know what I'm doing, but whatever it is, I'm doing it now! ;)

Do you have a 'favorite' excuse, one that keeps you from achieving the things you dream about?

Seth Godin: Free Wins

Seth Godin is a new discovery of mine. I had heard his name for years and kept meaning to look him up on the net, but never got around to it. Then a friend of mine said, "Yea, I love Seth Godin's blog, you should read it, I think you'd like it".

So I did.

He opened up my mind to a new way of thinking about community, about what it means to be part of a group, a tribe.

I discovered this video Seth Godin made and want to share it. In it he talks about his book, Unleashing The Idea Virus, and says:

Ideas that are free spread faster and ideas that spread, win.

So, free ideas win.

You might be thinking, yea, sure, you can say anything, what is he giving away for free? For starters, he's giving way Unleashing The Idea Virus as an ebook. You can get it from his site, here.

Here's a video where he talks about how he came up with these ideas:

Social Media: StumbleUpon: It works!

Derek Haines loves StubleUpon and here's why:

My blog completely froze and gave me a ‘Page Cannot Be Loaded’ message. So off I went on an immediate hunt to find out why. It took me some time because I was looking in all the wrong places, and even if I had an inkling of the problem I wouldn’t have known how to go about remedying it anyway. Therefore I didn’t find the problem and decided to try another alternative. Wait half an hour and see what happened.

During that half an hour I popped into Stumbleupon by sheer chance. There at the top of my page was my problem. My server had been hit by over 1,500 visitors in less than fifteen minutes. Yes, from Stumbleupon. As my site is on a very normal everyday type server, this was a bit too much for it to handle. But what a nice problem to have.

Read the entire article over at Derek Haines' blog, The Vandal: Blogging -- The Stumbleupon Effect.

Lately I have been studying ways to drive traffic to my blog but hadn't seriously considered StumbleUpon and, if not for Derek's article, likely wouldn't have for quite some time. Thanks Derek! I think that reading other writer's blog posts is the most useful thing I do all day.

Another site that is worth checking out, if you haven't already, is reddit.com. I mentioned fark.com to someone the other day and they rolled their eyes at me.

"No one reads Fark anymore," they said with pitying condescension.

We'll see about that! I thought and marched home where I compared reddit.com to fark.com using Google Trends.

They were right! Well, not completely right, as you can see reddit.com is trending down as well, but, nevertheless, I was surprised by the result and learnt something.

My goal for the day is going to be to learn more about StumbleUpon.

SiWC 2011: Getting started and Heading in the 'write' direction, by Robert Dugoni

Here are more of my SiWC notes, these are from day two, Saturday. I've mentioned Robert Dugoni before, but I don't think I've been able to communicate ... well, how inspirational his workshops (and keynotes!) are. Every time I walk away from a talk he's given I feel: Yes, I can do this!. If any of you ever have the opportunity to hear him talk, I recommend it.

My apologies in advance for the fractured nature of these notes. I repeat certain tips and the notes themselves are less organized than I'd like. My instinct is to tuck this post away until I have time to do it properly, but I know that's not going to happen, especially not during NaNo! So here my notes are, in all their imperfection.

What is the primary purpose of the novel? It is to entertain.

Your CHARACTERS entertain, NOT the author. If author tries to entertain then the story stops.

1. Backstory
Sometimes there is the temptation for the author to say, yes, we'll get to the story, but let me tell you about this first. You need to weave the backstory into the story.

2. Too much description
Sometimes there is the temptation to stop the story and describe a character. You don't have to describe a character unless it is important to the story.

AN EXCEPTION: If something is a marker, then you need to describe it. For example, if your character is wearing a Channel dress, that's a marker. If your character pulls up in a hummer rather than a VW, that's a marker. If it isn't a marker, then you don't need it. Most readers don't care. If it isn't really important don't stop the story to describe it. Also could sprinkle description throughout the book. Give us the description as it becomes important to character.

Have character moving and talking as you give the description.

RESEARCH: It is important if its important to the characters.

Be careful about giving your characters your personal opinions. Guard against your own attitudes and beliefs bleeding through to the character where it isn't appropriate.

Ask yourself: Are the characters entertaining or am I intruding into the story? The best authors are internal to the story.

Journeys
Your story is really the journey of your characters. The physical journey they take is the plot.

Emotional journey. Emotions get people, and your characters, to do things. Emotions give motivation. Basic human needs. Love, greed, protection.

Most books are about basic things.
- To win (a game) ( a contest) (the love of another)
- To stop (the world ending) (the abuse)
- To escape (a bad situation)
- To retrieve something (think Indiana Jones)
- To destroy something (Lord of the Rings)
- To save something or someone

Right now, write down the physical journey your character is on. What is their motivation for doing it?

Good. Now write down the emotional journey your character is on. What is his or her motivation for doing it.

Raising the stakes
Don Maass' books are great. Read them.
- How would you raise the stakes? You have a victim, how are you going to raise the stakes? How about revealing that the victim is the hero's brother? That's one way of doing it.

The hero has to care. What happens if the hero fails in reaching the goal? Raising the stakes means making the hero lose more, makes the loss more painful and less likely that the hero can recover. Make the goal more personal to the hero, that's how you raise the stakes.

Your goal is to establish the TONE of the book early. Each kind of book is going to have a different tone that will cure the reader that the books is, for example, a mystery, or a thriller, or a romance, etc.

Early on, introduce who the story is about, your readers need to meet the protagonist.

Also, you need to introduce the story problem early on. For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, the story problem is that the hero needs to take this ring a destroy it. Give your readers the story problem at the beginning of your story.

Hooking the reader
Classic openings in literature:
a. Everyday hero. Their everyday life. If your hero is a housewife, you see her going about her day, if your hero is a trial lawyer, you see them arguing a case, etc.
b. Action scene. The hero in action.
c. Emotional scene. Outside action opening. Da Vinci Code. Don't start with the hero. Start with the killing.
d. Prologue. Start in a time or place different from the rest of the book.
e. Flashback opening. Water for elephants. Take scene from the book and put it at the beginning. Like a scene out of sequence.

Warning: Readers don't like prologues. If you absolutely must have a prologue, call it chapter one.

Remember to write scenes where you use all your senses.

Some people say never start a book with your hero on a plane, train or in a car. Why? Because it's a static environment. It is difficult to have action or dialogue. You will be tempted to have your character thinking and thinking and thinking. That's not very interesting.

Goal
Your hero must have a goal. For instance, let's say that your hero can't be late or she'll be fired, but she also HAS to have her morning coffee. She peers into the coffee shop, there's no line up! She rushes inside and an elderly lady steps in front of her and she takes forever to order. The elderly lady is an obstacle that creates suspense.

Okay, so now your hero is late for work. She goes to the office. Her boss isn't there. She looks down the hall, but her boss isn't there either. Perhaps she'll be able to make it to her office and her boss will never know she was late! Her hero walks into her office and there's her boss, standing in her office.

How, should the boss say, "You're fired!"? No, at least, not until the next chapter. You need to keep the story moving forward.

Chapter Breaks
One thing you should ask yourself is: Does this chapter have a better question for the next chapter (a question the next chapter has to answer) if I take out the last paragraph? Often an author will summarize the chapter in the last paragraph, this is bad because it's boring. Your job is to get the reader to turn the next page. How do you do this? By raising story questions.

The first word of every scene
Use the first word of every scene to hook the reader. Raise a question. Readers are curious people by nature. If you raise a question in the first sentence they will want to answer it.

Flirt don't tease. Don't go 35 pages without answering a question you've raised.

Make the first sentence of every chapter great. Don't throw away the first or the last sentence of any scene.

Give the reader something interesting right away, as soon as your story begins. An interesting character should appear right away. Like going to a cocktail party or a book-signing. Unusual people, even people you might think are a bit crazy, are very interesting. The worst judgement you can make about someone is that they are boring.

Settings: Third element
Your settings help you tell the story. For instance, in a scene lets say you have a few tarantulas in a terrarium in an elementary school classroom. The teacher is putting some papers into her briefcase and her principal walks in. The teacher glances at the terrarium. The spiders are gone.

Opening scenes: Don't over-populate your first scene.

If a scene doesn't advance the story then cut it.

Here is a link to Robert Dugoni's home page.

My notes from other workshops I attended:
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Three: The Psychology of Plotting, Michael Slade
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Four: The Inner Journey, Donald Maass

NaNoWriMo: Write A Novel In 30 Days

Today is the first day of a month of insanity, when normally sane(ish) writers decide to work their day jobs and write about 2,000 words a day.

Can anyone say Red Bull?

This is my first year participating in NaNo, and so I've scoured the internet for tips and advice. Here is what Nathan Alderman from Macworld.com has to say:

Think Small
50,000 words sounds like a big, scary goal—until you realize that it breaks down to just 1,667 words a day, about an hour or two’s worth of steady typing. Rather than keeping your eyes on the distant finish line, use your program’s word-count targets to work toward the end of your latest paragraph, scene, or chapter. Those words will add up faster than you think. To keep track of your progress, you can enter your word count for each day in a box on the NaNoWriMo site, and compare it with those of your friends in the contest. And the site’s Word Count Widgets let you show off your progress on your own Web site.

Everybody Wants Something
Are your characters just sitting there like deadweight? Figure out what they want. Frodo Baggins wants to destroy (or, in darker moments, keep) the One Ring; Gully Foyle wants revenge on the spaceship that marooned him; Scout Finch wants to solve the mystery of Boo Radley. The simplest goals can create conflict and suspense, propelling your story forward. Screenwriter and playwright Todd Alcott’s terrific blog, What Does the Protagonist Want?, dissects popular movies to reveal their characters’ driving desires; check out his “Screenwriting 101” and “Spielberg” series of posts.

Keep Moving Forward
Writing is an adventure, and adventures always involve plenty of mistakes and wrong turns. For now, silence your inner critic, and stop caring whether what you’re writing is any good. Just keep writing. And don’t go back to tinker with your existing text, either. If you start editing when you should be writing, you might lose momentum and end up stuck. Besides, revisiting your prose in the cold light of December (or, better yet, February) will make you a much better judge of what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t Overplan
A fellow NaNoWriMo participant once showed me her elaborate spreadsheets filled with specific character details and breakdowns of her daily writing output, and then complained that she was stuck because her characters weren’t doing what she wanted them to. Keeping a few notes on your characters, settings, or overall story arc is a good idea. But half the fun of writing is seeing your characters do something you never expected. Too much planning can squelch that improvisational spirit.
- Advice from a noveling veteran

Okay, got it? Good! Now let's write.

First apps for your new iPad, 2011 edition

Dwight Silverman from TechBlog writes:

A few months after the first iPad was released last year, I posted a list of apps that new owners should consider installing first. It has become one of the most popular posts on TechBlog, but it was written almost 14 months ago. That’s eons in Internet time, and it’s already out of date.

With that in mind, here’s an updated version of the list. It includes many of the original items, but others have fallen off and new apps have been added. Some of the additions came from solicitations I posted to Twitter, Facebook and Google+. (And thanks to everyone who made suggestions!)

Dwight's list is both awesome and extensive, and I'll give you the link to it at the end of this article, but I thought I'd highlight a few apps I've found particularly useful.

Beat the Traffic HD – Traffic and weather for the iPad. If you’ve got an iPad 3G, it will also tell you how fast you’re going.

This app makes me wish I had an iPad 3G!

Dictionary.com – Dictionary & Thesaurus – The popular iPhone dictionary app is reformatted for the iPad. It’s a large download (grab it via Wi-Fi if you have a 3G iPad), but once it’s installed, it won’t have to connect to the Net to download definitions.

I love Word Of The Day feature on this one. It's intuitive and the advertising isn't too intrusive.

Dragon Dictation – Excellent voice recognition from the folks who bring you Dragon Naturally Speaking. Say what you want to write, then paste it into any application, including e-mail. No, it’s not as amazing at the iPhone 4S’s Siri, but it will make text input on your iPad a lot easier.

I've been playing around with Dragon Dictation for the past week or so, but I find it a bit lacking. In order for it's accuracy to approach something I'm comfortable with I have to talk very slowly and take care to enunciate clearly. (Yes, this is probably something I should do all the time!) That said, for a free app it is amazing and well worth the time it takes to download. It's a fun app, just not as useful for a writer as I'd like.

On the other hand, I've heard nothing but great things about Dragon Naturally Speaking and plan to buy the software. I'll keep you updated on how it goes. I'm interested in whether it will help me write more by allowing me to record sound files on, say, my walk to work and then using the voice recognition software to transcribe the file. (My 6th grade teacher talked about how in the future this would be possible but we rolled our eyes and him and thought he was nuts! Sorry Mr. Schmidt.)

Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List – A beautifully designed, smartly organized recipe and grocery shopping application that includes user reviews of the recipes.

The recipes look scrumptious and I was excited by the prospect of having a grocery list on my iPad, but it seems that the list is linked to the recopies and you can't add items on a whim. If I'm wrong about that, please let me know. For me, this isn't a keeper.

Facebook – At long last, Facebook has updated its iOS app to be iPad-friendly. If you’re on Facebook, you’ll want it.

I'm on Facebook, but I'm a reluctant Facebooker. I love all my friends on Facebook, but some aspects of the site puzzle me.

Feeddler RSS Reader for iPad and iPhone – The best RSS reader for the iPad. It’s particularly good if you have a lot of feeds to manage.

I'm always on the lookout for RSS readers, and after fiddling around with this app for about half an hour, I'm in love! This is the RSS reader I've been looking for.

Find My Friends – Get your friends to install this free Apple app on their iOS devices, and you can see where they are. They, of course, can see where you are, too. It’s also great for families, allowing you to keep track of where your kids’ locations.

I haven't downloaded this app and I don't plan to. The whole idea seems creepy to me, but I see the utility for concerned Moms and Dads so I'm including it.

Flipboard – Feed this app your Twitter and Facebook streams and it extracts links from your friends’ updates, displaying the results in a magazine-like format. This is one of the most innovative iPad apps you can install, and probably the best way to view the information flowing into your social networks.

What he said. I use Flipboard daily and love it. This is a must-have app.

iMovie – Did you think the iPad’s touch-based interface was too limiting for video editing? Think again. It’s $4.99.

This is an awesome app. I've been using to edit videos I've taken with my iPad and it's wonderful. Sometimes the touch interface gets the better of me, but that more of an iPad thing than a limitation of iMovie. I'm almost read to upload my first movie to YouTube and make it public, so I'll let you all judge for yourselves!

Kindle – Amazon’s book-reading app is so much better than Apple’s own iBooks e-reader. If you’ve got a Kindle or a smartphone with the Kindle app, you can pick up where you left off on any of those devices.

I like iBooks, but there's no question: Kindle is great. I do most of my reading on it. No complaints.

Pages – The iPad doesn’t really come with a decent word processor, so if you’re planning on writing anything beyond a quick note or an email, you’ll want this well-designed app from Apple. It’s full-featured and is $9.99.

Pages is excellent, especially since it's now possible to put files in folders.

Speedtest X HD – If you’re compulsive about checking your connection speed, you’ll want this app. The one downside: you can only choose from four testing locations.

After downloading Speedtest and running it I'm underwhelmed. Apart from a rating out of 5 stars it doesn't give much of an analysis of your score.

I encourage you to read the entire article: First apps for your new iPad, 2011 edition

My App Recommendations (all these apps are free):
- Dragonvale. Hugely entertaining and addicting. Beware.

- SmartRecord. You can use this app to record lectures, or post sound files to your twitter account. It also allows you to imbed images. I haven't tried out posting to Twitter yet, but it's a cool idea. Easy to use and free.

- TED: Ideas worth spreading. You all know about TED, right? Folks with something worth saying are invited to say it.

- Yelp. Find restaurants near you and read reviews from people like you.

I love technology posts! I hope you found something new and neat. Cheers.

My Birthday, NaNoWriMo and Dragonvale: a warning

Okay, I've spent a couple of hours doing things like answering emails and reading posts and now I have half an hour to compose a blog post. Can I do it?

Yes I can! By talking about three things that seemingly have nothing to do with one another.

It was my birthday last week and thank you to everyone who said happy birthday, I really appreciate it! I worked on my birthday -- I'm talking about my day job -- so my friends are taking me out today to celebrate. I'm going to Society.

That's later, in a few minutes I'm heading off to a NaNoWriMo luncheon and information session. I'm excited! As I've said too many times, this is my first year doing NaNo and the 'bright shiny' hasn't worn off. I talk to other, veteran, NaNoers and they look at me pityingly with memories of beery, bloodshot eyes and waking up at their desk, gripping a half-empty can of Red Bull.

I'm time-starved right now so I know something is going to have to give. Sleep, of course. Showering ... hmmm, probably try to keep that one. One thing that's probably going to fall by the wayside is Dragonvale, a delightfully addictive game featuring ... er ... dragons. You get to mate them and build them houses and feed them. Okay, it doesn't sound super addicting but, trust me, it is.

Okay, gotta run!