There’s nobody out there waiting for it, and nobody’s going to scold you if you don’t do it. - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Okay - that last part’s not entirely true - not for the month of November, at least. Because today is day one of the WORD (Write OR Die Challenge). You can find out all about it on Sylvia’s message board, and it’s not to late to sign up if you’re up for the challenge *read: Torture*

I’ve set my goal - 150 new pages. I’m trying to focus on one WIP, A Date With Destiny, but who knows where those 150 pages will end up. And, with this challenge, unlike the official one, it doesn’t matter if you work on something old or something new. Fewer rules, and that’s good, cause you all know how I feel about rules.

So this past weekend, I did everything possible to prepare, cleared my schedule, as you will. Except I have a bad feeling that the laundry’s going to suffer in a major way. I’m not sure where it all comes from, since there are only three of us and it’s not like we work in a coal mine or anything. But it’s a constant flow and there’s no feeling of accomplishment in finishing it and getting it put away, because there’s always another basket there, and I’m all about closure.

I also seem to have gotten my destiny pages to work again. However, they’re all very cranky pages and occasionally (or more often) you will find any number of them down again. The TAG pages fared better, but it’s not a finished site yet. I did put up excerpts because I was tired of the button leading to nothing. If you get a chance, stop by and read the excerpts. Comments are always welcomed. If they’re complimentary comments, so much the better.

Oh - and here’s a blurb from A DATE WITH DESTINY. It’s so not perfect, but it gives you an idea of what I’m writing, so when I start foaming at the mouth and quoting snippets of the story here, you’ll understand what’s going on.

Crazed mercenaries, men in togas and major S&M dreams were not a part of Navy SEAL Nick Devane’s life a month ago. Neither were redheaded lawyers. One little near death experience and suddenly everything in his life was turned completely upside down and inside out.

Cassandra Parish hadn’t planned on kissing Nick, but when the roof collapsed next to them she couldn’t deny the power their kiss had invoked. And when her dreams became entwined with his, she was bound and determined to find a way to stop them.

And one other funny - was reading Nina Bangs journal yesterday. (Found her site on Gynodummy’s journal aka Nina’s web designer, so I popped on over for a look) Nina’s an ex-English teacher, just like me, and two of her former students found her and posted to her journal. They were super sweet, but I wrote her to say that that’s my biggest fear - that my ex-students will find me. The first class I ever taught are now sophomores in college (or collage, as they used to write in their essays. As in, ‘when I graduate high school, I am going on to collage.’ Of course, these are the same students who thought that Al Gore was one word - Algore, and that that was the man’s first name. ‘What’s his last name?” they would ask. I answered patiently, because it was better than explaining once again that even though the word a lot might look better written as one word, it wasn’t one. Because I’m the mommy here. And I dismiss you, not the bell.) Anyway - I live in the town where I used to teach and my students can and will find me anywhere. One time they even knocked down an entire display of razors in the local CVS running to me. Mind you, they had just seen me two hours earlier, in school. And I seriously am not that exciting that people need to run and see me. But obviously, to a bunch of 13 year olds, I am. Should that scare me?

So anyway - Nina’s new site is beautiful and since I’m a blog junkie, all she’s hooked me since I noticed immediately that she has a journal. Means she’s come over to the dark side.

And speaking of the dark side - Must. Go. Write. It would be completely humiliating to hit day 1 of the WORD challenge and not hit my page quota. However, I could not let my fellow bloggers down, so I wrote a nice, long post so they can spend a little time procrastinating - er, reading. Hey, I’m nothing if not helpful. And, if you’re 13, exciting.

Steph T.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2004 at 12:08 am and is filed under Writing Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.