(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 44)

Maybe you’ve heard of NaNoWriMo.

Maybe you haven’t.

It’s National Novel Writing Month. (Get it? Na(tonal) No(vel) Wri(ting) Mo(nth).)

It’s a thing that happens every November that I’ve been aware of but never thought twice about participating in.

And then as the girls were out trick-or-treating on Thursday night I thought of something that I might want to write about and said, “You know what? Let’s see if I can write this.”

So I signed up for NaNoWriMo and I’m going to give writing a book another whirl.

Six years ago (!) I wrote a book.

I don’t honestly know if it’s any good or not.

I wrote it, I showed it to a few people, and I just didn’t believe in it enough to go any further with it. I haven’t even re-read it in 5 years. Maybe there will come a time that I will re-visit it.

But, listen, there’s been plenty I’ve written in these six years since I left teaching that I’ve been proud of and ready to publish…and this book just didn’t fall into that category.

So eventually I was going to write something else. And there’s always been an excuse not to.

And now it’s time to eliminate the excuses and just get down to it.

And, believe me, there are plenty of excuses.

I came up with an idea on Halloween night. I started writing on Friday. I’m probably not going to keep up the 1,667-word-a-day pace that NaNoWriMo sets as a goal to write a 50,000-word novel before the end of the month.

But you gotta be in it to win it…and I’m already ahead of writing something than I was a few days ago.

I have no idea when I’ll find the time to write those words on certain days. (Whoops. That’s an excuse.) But I’ll worry about that bridge when we cross it.

For now, I’ll just write about this idea I had and I’ll keep writing until I run out of steam.

With any luck…I’ll finish the book before that happens.

Writing

*Holy heck what do you want from me I just told you I’m going to try to write a book. I don’t know that there’s time for anything else. But I’m aiming to keep finding time to write the Sunday Paper each week to keep you posted in this section, so I guess there’s that.

Comedy

*I made it out to the open mic at The Comedy Studio late Tuesday night. It was the only night of this week I was going to be able to make work and I knew I’d be performing in front of like 5 people and I did and I threw some new stuff to the wall and a couple of jokes stuck. So I’ll keep working on them. Not sure what I’ll be doing this week except for this: Saturday night is the next Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’ with headliner Kathe Farris and I’m so excited about it. I hope to see you there - you can get tickets here if you are interested. (You should be interested.)

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*Too much candy.

Thoughts On Dog Ownership

*On Friday Tate and I walked the girls to school. Walks with Tate are a little dicey…she does well when the girls are there to motivate her. Without the girls she’s likely to lollygag, laying down in the middle of the street or on someone’s lawn. On Friday, though, I employed a strategy from puppy training class, and she walked with purpose almost straight home. (And she didn’t linger too long in sadness after we parted ways with the girls.) So…we’re making progress.

Notes

Please Note: This is NOT the pumpkin I carved. (It is what I meant to carve.)

*This year we didn’t really think about what we were going to carve on the pumpkin until we already bought the pumpkin. The girls and I were pretty convinced it should be something dog-related, since we got Tate this year. I suggested Snoopy, which wasn’t met with much enthusiasm. Then I realized we watched all the Marvel movies this year and should definitely do a Spider-Man pumpkin. I found the one you see pictured at the right, and I knew it would be challenging, but figured I’d give it a shot.

It….did not turn out well.

If you want to see some better efforts, last year’s jack-o-lantern, a unicorn, can be found here. This link has the year before’s, and it also includes a link to previous carvings, I think. I didn’t click all the way through.

This year’s pumpkin is at the bottom of this post.

*I’ve been doing medium runs the past couple of weeks, but the weather and a lack of a goal have been impediments to getting much done. After this week and the tons of candy and the looming holiday eating I know I’m going to be doing…I need to start motivating myself to exercise more.

*I’ve been putting more stuff out there on the Facebook page…including a time lapse video of me raking the leaves in the yard! Don’t miss out on other compelling content like that - Make sure you Like the page! And Twitter is going great. I hope you’re following me there - because if you’re not you’re missing some good stuff.

*The Mets hired their new manager on Friday - former player Carlos Beltran. You know I need to weigh in to record my thoughts for posterity. There’s a lot of talk about the Mets making a mistake by going with another unproven first-time manager to follow up an unsuccessful first-time manager. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. First-time managers have found more success than not lately - Aaron Boone, Alex Cora, Rocco Baldelli, Dave Martinez, to name a few. And Beltran was on the same World Series-winning team as Cora right before Cora became a manager, so that can’t be bad. Legacy-wise, I think enough Mets fans appreciate Beltran the player in a way that won’t fade no matter what happens with Beltran the manager. And because so many Mets fans blame him for the team coming up short in 2006 (and in 2007 and 2008), his legacy can’t get much worse if he fails as a manager. (He’s a different case than David Wright, whose legacy would suffer in a different way if he failed as a manager.) Two quick last things: There were reports as I write this that Beltran wants Terry Collins as his bench coach - I love Terry Collins and would love this to happen. And lastly, it doesn't matter who’s managing the team if they don’t fix their bullpen.

*OK, here’s how the pumpkin turned out. When I first started carving pumpkins like this years ago I said, “I’m either about to do something great or ruin a pumpkin.” I’ve done some great ones. This year I ruined a pumpkin: