It's NaNo time!

And NO, I am not participating.

I attempted it once. I got about six thousand words out of it before life interfered and it ground to a dismal halt.

I mean, who the hell decided that it should be in November, for God's sake? Smack in the middle of an incredibly busy holiday season, where I'm actually expected to interact with my family and travel hundreds of miles to see them as well! Churning out 1,667 words a day during November is patently impossible for me.

Not only that, I'm not sure I even have a novel in me. My Muses seem to prefer short form. The longest fanfic I ever did was "Mustard Seed," and that capped out at about 35K words. Now, all the stories taken as a whole in the MustardVerse might put it over novel-length (I haven't actually checked), but they're discrete parts of a series, not a whole--each one can be read as a standalone with the proper "previouslies" introduction. The longest origific I've done skated in at under 10K words (and is being published soon!).

So. That, in a nutshell (or possibly a teal deer; you decide), is why I'm not participating in NaNo.

That being said, for those of you on my flist who are participating? Go, you! Getting the words on the screen is half the battle. You might be churning out crap, but crap can be edited into not-crap. A blank screen, not so much.

I'll be over here on the sidelines, waving pompoms. As my friend kenrand likes to say: Anyone can say you can't write. Let no one say you don't.

It's NaNo time!

And NO, I am not participating.

I attempted it once. I got about six thousand words out of it before life interfered and it ground to a dismal halt.

I mean, who the hell decided that it should be in November, for God's sake? Smack in the middle of an incredibly busy holiday season, where I'm actually expected to interact with my family and travel hundreds of miles to see them as well! Churning out 1,667 words a day during November is patently impossible for me.

Not only that, I'm not sure I even have a novel in me. My Muses seem to prefer short form. The longest fanfic I ever did was "Mustard Seed," and that capped out at about 35K words. Now, all the stories taken as a whole in the MustardVerse might put it over novel-length (I haven't actually checked), but they're discrete parts of a series, not a whole--each one can be read as a standalone with the proper "previouslies" introduction. The longest origific I've done skated in at under 10K words (and is being published soon!).

So. That, in a nutshell (or possibly a teal deer; you decide), is why I'm not participating in NaNo.

That being said, for those of you on my flist who are participating? Go, you! Getting the words on the screen is half the battle. You might be churning out crap, but crap can be edited into not-crap. A blank screen, not so much.

I'll be over here on the sidelines, waving pompoms. As my friend kenrand likes to say: Anyone can say you can't write. Let no one say you don't.

Well, at least I had one electoral victory today...

Not that I got to vote in that one.

But some of the pilots where the Hubby works decided that they thought it might be a good idea to have representation from ALPA, the Air Line Pilot's Association. I refer to them as ALPO, just so you know where I stand on the issue--and the Hubby has a similar attitude. He's been lobbying his fellow pilots hard to reject the union, seeing no sense in paying them two percent of his paycheck for...not a whole lot, honestly. They have an in-house union that does them just fine, and voting the union out is just about impossible and does bad things to your career if you want to move to a unionized airline--even if you didn't vote to remove the union personally, you're basically blackballed if you work for an airline that got rid of the union.

Last time this happened, the union BARELY got voted down, something like 49-51%. We figured it was really nip and tuck this time. But the pilots have spoken, and this time only 35% of them voted for the union. YAY.

We'll see how the Utah school voucher thing went later tonight. According to the polls, there's not much hope for it. Voter turnout was really high for this one. I actually had to wait in line to vote this time, for possibly the first time ever. And I don't know if that's a bad or a good thing. Like I said before, I don't have a financial or personal stake in this one (we make too much to benefit from the voucher, home schoolers don't get a voucher anyway, and a kid would have to be in a public school and transfer to a private school to get the voucher in the first place--and Da Boy will go to a public school only under the most dire of circumstances), but IMO anything that empowers parents to make choices in education for their kids is a good thing.

In fact, I found myself yelling at my radio today over the "no accountability" argument the anti-voucher people are using. Because, really, what sort of accountability do the public schools have? They fail, and ask for more money. It practically takes an act of Congress to get an incompetent teacher fired. Where's that much-vaunted "accountability" again?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

In other news, Hodgins on "Bones" has the most fabulous giggle ever.

And I made this icon today:

Well, at least I had one electoral victory today...

Not that I got to vote in that one.

But some of the pilots where the Hubby works decided that they thought it might be a good idea to have representation from ALPA, the Air Line Pilot's Association. I refer to them as ALPO, just so you know where I stand on the issue--and the Hubby has a similar attitude. He's been lobbying his fellow pilots hard to reject the union, seeing no sense in paying them two percent of his paycheck for...not a whole lot, honestly. They have an in-house union that does them just fine, and voting the union out is just about impossible and does bad things to your career if you want to move to a unionized airline--even if you didn't vote to remove the union personally, you're basically blackballed if you work for an airline that got rid of the union.

Last time this happened, the union BARELY got voted down, something like 49-51%. We figured it was really nip and tuck this time. But the pilots have spoken, and this time only 35% of them voted for the union. YAY.

We'll see how the Utah school voucher thing went later tonight. According to the polls, there's not much hope for it. Voter turnout was really high for this one. I actually had to wait in line to vote this time, for possibly the first time ever. And I don't know if that's a bad or a good thing. Like I said before, I don't have a financial or personal stake in this one (we make too much to benefit from the voucher, home schoolers don't get a voucher anyway, and a kid would have to be in a public school and transfer to a private school to get the voucher in the first place--and Da Boy will go to a public school only under the most dire of circumstances), but IMO anything that empowers parents to make choices in education for their kids is a good thing.

In fact, I found myself yelling at my radio today over the "no accountability" argument the anti-voucher people are using. Because, really, what sort of accountability do the public schools have? They fail, and ask for more money. It practically takes an act of Congress to get an incompetent teacher fired. Where's that much-vaunted "accountability" again?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

In other news, Hodgins on "Bones" has the most fabulous giggle ever.

And I made this icon today: