NaNoWriMo, nahh-na-na-na-nahh

The craziest thing happened on the exit ramp of this blog... 




Go, see Ann at Lake E: NaNoWriMo


See me at Wild Turtle Crossing


And find Maura, Maura? Where are you?


The three of us are jumping into National Novel Writing Month, a marathon on keyboard starting Monday, November 1.   The goal?  To draft a 50,000-word novel/novella/long story from start to finish (well sorta) in 30 days.   


I can't imagine how this will go for me. Which is pitiful, considering the entire point is to exercise the imagination.  Open on my desktop is a long letter from the NaNoWri-To Team outlining the rules of engagement (no rules), the opportunities for discovery and literary madcap fun (I think not) , and suggestions for getting through the month despite the  "specter of personal humiliation" looming at every page. 


"You've read a lot of novels," the email states, "so you're completely up to the challenge of writing one."  Oh really?  I don't know about you, but I find there's a distinction between a reading an actual book and facing an actual blank page.


I don't have a plan, other than to crawl along the page, at my own pace,  one word at a time, 1667 words a day, sweeping every last crumb, note, and passing observation into the word count.   I barely have a glimmer of where to start.  Breaking the first rule to "write what you know," I'm heading down the road, knowing nothing whatsoever  -- winging it, a wild turtle crossing.


Wish us luck.  And thanks for stopping by.        

Review-a-Day - My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey through the Thicket of Adolescence by Lauren Kessler, reviewed by The Oregonian - Powell's Books

Review-a-Day - My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey through the Thicket of Adolescence by Lauren Kessler, reviewed by The Oregonian - Powell's Books

Michigandering

Besides orange barrels on the road, chili dogs, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Ford Country, shipwrecks, Mackinac Island, Frankenmuth, Leelanau Wine Tours, Comerica Park, bow-hunting season, Au Sable River, Petoskey stones and Autumn passing in flying colors, what makes Michigan so Michigan?

Welcome to my adopted state of mind. Wild Turtle Crossing: Pure Michigandering

Oy, Gefilte

Choose This. Not That!

L'Shana Tova.

To read on... stop by

http://wildturtlecrossing.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-to-make-of-gefilte-fish.html

Labor Day

Blogging on. Still tap-tap-tapping at a keyboard, lost in concentration on one bumpy sentence after another, scrabbling on the rocks of one word at a time.

Chewing pencils into alpha-bit shavings, figuratively speaking. Noting lists and links, tags and twittering friends, books to read, movies to see, games to play, technology to ponder, and other points of interest across the galaxy of the internet.

The voice of the turtle calls. Welcome to

http://www.wildturtlecrossing.blogspot.com

Wild Turtle Crossing

Photo source: miniature alphabet pencil sculptures by Dalton Ghetti telegraph.co.uk

Slowly crossing

How does it feels to start-up a new blog?

• like working in your pajamas
• like moving into your first apartment
• like scrubbing floors, opening windows, unpacking boxes, arranging sock drawers
• like lighting candles
• like Trick-or-Treat with no one coming to the door
• like a turtle crossing in heavy traffic
• like dancing at water’s edge

Welcome to

www.wildturtlecrossing.blogspot.com

(A new path, just down the road.)

On a slow day

Have you ever actually seen a turtle crossing the road? Indeed a pitiful sight, an exercise in futility, surely to meet with shell-cracking, body-flattening disaster. Death by speeding rubber. But still, imagine that act of faith in the motion forward. Onward. Proceed at all costs to the other side.

Because I am slow to cross the road, because I am slow to read signs, even when the handwriting’s on the wall, because I am slow to say goodbye, troubled by closings and endings of all kinds, because I’m slow to write, a procrastinator by nature, because I’ve developed the habit of checking this blog from day to day and dropping my line or two, because habits die slowly, even when splattered on the road, here I am.

Here. Present. Hand raised. Eager to answer a question no one has asked of me. Ready. Notebook open. Seated in a classroom, where no one is taking attendance, where I am the sole student. Slow learner. Stringing sentences together. Writing for the sake of . . . writing. On a blog that I did not begin. Okay, let’s see how this goes. A turtle. Crossing the road.