Two Things

Two things in this last week of October I’d like to mention that you may or may not be interested in.

The first concerns my writing plans for November. For the past couple of years, I’ve taken part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to write and finish a novel during the month of November (50,000 words). One year I wrote a novel called The Last Dragon; last year I finished a work-in-progress called Wolf Dream. I love them both, yet they both are sitting ignored in a crate upstairs, abandoned in their first draft messiness. I have no plans to try for a third novel this year, as I’ve been more interested in creative nonfiction, memoir and blog posts lately, rather than fiction. To keep the love alive, I have to follow my muse.

So instead of participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I’m going to try my hand at NaBloPoMo, aka National Blog Posting Month. The goal, of course, is to write a blog post every day for the month of November. Some people do this all the time. I do not. Two, or at most, three blog posts per week has been my norm. I try to put a decent amount of thought and planning into each post, and that takes time amid my other writing and life obligations. So to publish a post every single day for a month will be a real challenge for me-not only to come up with an idea everyday, but to dash it off fairly quickly and off the cuff, and try to make it at least a little bit interesting. That’s a bit daunting. But I’m excited to give it a try and see what comes up.( I apologize ahead of time for showing up in your feed every single day for that month. Thank you for your indulgence.)

 

The other thing is that I’d like to post some of my short stories here on the blog. These stories have made their share of rounds in the submission process. A couple of them made it to the second round of judging in one particular publication, but they ultimately passed. Another placed in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2013, but despite sending it out to dozens of publications, no one wanted it. Oh well. I still think these stories are pretty good. They’re like your children that didn’t make it into an Ivy League school, but you still love them and think they’re pretty darn smart anyway. They deserve a permanent home, and here seems as good a place as any to put them.

So starting this week, I’ll be posting a story every Friday under the new category Stories. Most are between two and five thousand words. Read them and feel free to comment if you like. Or not. That’s okay. They’ll be here, listed with a description and a link on the My Work page. Since this Friday is the one before Halloween, I’ll post my story The Hungry, about monsters in the basement. Oooh!