My, How Time Flies

I just checked my blog, possibly looking to see if anyone has posted anything lately, and was surprised to see that my post acknowledging the great epistolarian Nelson Marans was written on October 15. I literally cannot believe that seven weeks have passed so quickly when it feels, some days, like time just crawls forward. Some days, I am in meetings so boring that I *wish* I could discover a Marans letter. It would truly be the high point of my day.

In the time since I last posted, I have been busy though. I have concocted a legitimate business proposal for which I am courting a serious investor (serious investor = my husband). I have written a rough draft of my first novel. I have maintained a sour dough starter per my New Year's resolution for 337 days, so it seems reasonable that it will last the entire year. I'm feelin' good. I'm at the top of my game.

You want to hear about the novel? Of course you do. Let me first say that I did it under the auspices of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, an annual event where participants are expected to write 50,000 words in order to "win" the distinction of having written a novel. It's all based on an honor system, and there are no prizes. Some people, let's call them "hipsters", are skeptical of this method of creating a novel. Here are their arguments: (1) it's not "art" to do it racing against a clock; (2) there are a LOT of fan fiction scifi* jugbu** types involved (3) it's corny to participate in any activity that involves other people. At least, I think those are the arguments. Anyway, I have decided I will weigh their arguments more seriously once they provide me with 50,000 words of a rough draft of a novel.

I am actually not going to say a lot about my novel. It's "realistic fiction". (I don't know what is up with me and quotation marks today). It is not fan fiction or science fiction.  I titled it "Upstate" until I found out that there is another novel with that name, which is a so-called "urban romance" (OHMyGOD stop me from putting quotes around another thing!). My novel is nowhere near as interesting as the story about Antonio and the letters he writes his girl from prison. But whatever, mine is an okay story. You cannot read it yet, though. I am going to actually sit down and do a serious revision and probably write another 20,000 words before this baby sees the light of day. At that point, I will start tweeting it line by line. Kidding.

With 27 days left until New Year's Eve, I will go ahead and make this resolution: I will revise this novel and show it to at least some of you. Okay, how's that? Aiming high for 2014.


* science fiction
* juggling/bisexual union: a reference to the fact that in our college, there was a 100% overlapping Venn diagram of the members of the juggling club and the University of Chicago Bisexual Union, and all of them were very hirsute and very sketchy.