Kate Warren

It's been a difficult few days.  I've been having odd itching episodes.  Not the usual ones where you put your hands in the dishwater and your nose starts itching.  It was more palms and soles of feet.  Then Sunday night I felt like something was stuck in my throat. Didn't sleep well that night.  Next morning it was worse.  I could breath and talk, but it was very uncomfortable, especially when swallowing.  

So after getting the kids off to school we went to the clinic for walk-in hours.  They sent me over to the hospital where I was diagnosed with a nasty allergy to...something.

Don't officially know what I'm allergic to but we do have a short list of possible ones.  They mentioned epinephrine but as I could breath and don't like intra-muscular injections I opted for prednisone instead, along with a dose of benadryl.  Interesting note: I wasn't aware that hives can show up after the itching, brought on by scratching.  I always thought they came first or on their own.

Two days later I'm still itching but my throat is back to normal.  Trying to take only non-drowsy antihistamines, but they don't work as well as the ones that make me sleepy.  I'll see an allergist next week and hopefully we'll find out that my allergen(s) can be easily avoided.  


I was ahead for NaNo before this hit.  Now I'm back to just keeping pace, but that's ok.  I'm going to take some more medicine now. 

Kate

Ladies and gentleman, National Novel Writing Month has commenced.  What does this mean?  It means I will actually be writing every day.  It also means I will not be participating in Six Sentence Sunday during the month of November, unless by some miracle I finish my WIP early.  I will miss it, but I won't likely have time.

On to the fun.  If you've never participated in NaNoWriMo, you might want to give it a try.  If November doesn't work, you could try one of the summer Camps instead. 

Or do your own personal NaNo.  Just take 50,000 words and divide by the number of days in the month to get your daily wordcount goal.  Write that many words or more each day and you will have a novel-length work by the end of the month.  Granted most novels published these days are longer, but the traditional minimum wordcount for a book to meet the definition of "novel" is 50,000.  You can write more if you want to.

What do you win?  Really cool bragging rights, a neat certificate, special offers from select sponsers, and the fact that you've written every day for a month.

I've posted a Guide to Genres specifically for NaNo participants.  It has its own page on the site.  It's somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Must grab some breakfast before I get down to the business of seeing what I'm going to write this year.  That's right.  I don't decide until day one.  I sit down, start typing, and see what comes out, and that's the story I go with.  Not very smart perhaps, but its worked for me for the last three years.  I have a feeling I'll be continuing last year's novel, but I never know for sure.

Updates will be posted here, on my Facebook page, and on Twitter.  Happy NaNovember everybody!

Kate

If you know me well, you know that I am devoted to a thing called National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short.

I realized last night at o'dark-thirty that I had not written my weekly blog post.  Frantically searching for a topic I remembered that NaNoWriMo is having two Camps this summer and the first one is mere weeks away.  

Camp NaNoWriMo is a semi-unofficial NaNo done during the summer with it's own unique culture and rewards.  I am not privy to this culture or the rewards as I have not participated in Camp NaNoWriMo, but I bet there's a really cool secret handshake.  This year June and August have been selected for the Camps.  Summer doesn't work for me, but don't let that stop you!

"What the heck is this anyway?" you ask.  
I answer: "a no-holds-barred noveling adventure where you write 50,000 words in one month!"  
"Impossible!" you say.  
"Not so," say I.

The main event is in November and I've done it three times.  In fact, NaNoWriMo is the one time in the year when I am ridiculously productive as a writer.  I write more in that one month than I do the other eleven.  Why?  Because NaNo is insanely motivating!

I love going on the website and looking at my progress, comparing it to that of my NaNo Buddies, and wasting time...er...doing research on the forums.  It's a social experience as well as a literary one.

But it must be terribly complicated, you think.  Not at all, I think back (because apparently there is a strong telepathic connection between us).  Just go to the website, sign up, introduce yourself--WriMos are famous for being friendly, we're right up there with the Irish (Irish WriMos are double friendly)--and wait for the starting bell.

For more information, follow one of the links I have generously sprinkled throughout this post, or click on this one:  National Novel Writing Month.

Now for your viewing pleasure, an entertaining video made in honor of the 2009 NaNoWriMo event.