Christmas Mishmash

 On the Shabbat before Christmas it's home for the holidays, challah and poinsettias on the table, a merry blend of food, and. . . birthday gifts for all.    To read the post, please find me on Open Salon  or
http://www.wildturtlecrossing.blogspot.com

Wishing you the happiest of holidays and a healthy, peaceful New Year.

Are You Ready? Best Chocolate Pound Cake Ever

Oh, joy of chocolate.  


Working in the night kitchen. Getting ready for tomorrow's post at


http://www.wildturtlecrossing.blogspot.com


or 


http://open.salon.com/blog/vivianh

From my kitchen to yours, wishing you happy baking and merry holidays. Thanks for stopping by.

Enough is Never Enough with Latkes

Nothing like a plate of potato pancakes to inspire excess.   For more,  see Editor's Picks on Open Salon  Vivian Henoch's Blog or follow me on Wild Turtle Crossing

For the source of today's scrumptious photo with recipes for toppings, see  Small Latkes, Large Toppings — A Good Appetite - NYTimes.com 

Article by Melissa Clark, photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times.


For a good laugh go to Hanukkah, Rekindled - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Contributor Howard Jacobson, this year's Man Booker Prize winner for "The Finkler Question."

Blogging down?

Yup, and still slogging away every morning for nearly two weeks now,definetly not writing the novel of my dreams.  

Instead,  I've been rolling out of bed around 4 a.m,  tapping at the keyboard until I actually wake up and the fog clears around 6.  I admit to few if any aha moments where the writing breaks through and takes wing. How could it, under the circumstances?
  

In the process, between glimmers of insight and morning light,  I've caught the sniffles (cough, cough) and grown more irritable with each passing day, adding my slapdash words to the count, racing the clock before daybreak.   

In short-lived triumph, I post the morning's output on the NaNoWriMo site, hit submit, and watch the words melt away, disappearing into a graph, charting my "progress."  

My cumulative word count?  Around 21,000 words.  Give or take. My  "stats" assure me that at the present pace of 2000 messy words a day, my ETA for the finish line is November 25.   

And that's a good thing. 

Starting next weekend,  I expect to be diverting most of my energy and attention to Thanksgiving prep, recipes, groceries and cooking... joining family out of town.      

From monkey-at-a-typewriter to turkey.  Sounds about right.

Hey, thanks for dropping by. I find that you're here strangely encouraging. 

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