Happy November!

Happy November and welcome to my favorite month.  It's ushered in by the fun of Halloween, contains my birthday and my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving.  Plus, every where you look, the trees are turning to one of my favorite colors, orange.  And it's ushered out by a season of generosity and goodwill.

I've decided to challenge myself a bit this month... you know... because I didn't already have enough to do.  I decided I am going to create a 30 Days of Gratitude Project.  As this idea just came to me tonight, inspired by other friend's gratitude posts, I haven't entirely decided how I'm going to do that yet.  It will probably be me posting here in a gratitude-journal sort of way but maybe I'll get crafty with it too.

The other challenge I gave myself is to participate in NaNoWriMo (how do you pronounce that?).  I'm blaming all 3 of the Three Blind Wives, not just Lara, the author of the "offending" blog post.  I have never really written fiction.  I am inspired to write the occasional poem or song... usually dark, angry and cathartic. But a NOVEL?!  Never.  It was a dark and stormy night... or an unseasonable warm and sunny autumn day... when I decided to stretch my brain a bit and try my hand at writing fiction.  I've already named by two main characters!  I'm also dragging my 9 year old homeschooled son along for the ride.  He tells me the most entertaining, extravagant stories, but it's like trying to pull teeth to get him to write them down. NaNoWriMo has fantastic workbooks to help kids (and adults like me who have no idea where to start).  I printed the book for elementary school for Jasper (all 126 pages) and the high school workbook for myself (91 pages).  I figure it's been at least high school since I wrote any fiction that ran over one page in length.