I’ve just signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those of you unfamiliar with it from Katie’s site). Since it’s still the beginning of October, that means I’ve got plenty of time to decide if I want to try NaNoWriMo with my current novel series (either by continuing with book two or jumping ahead into book three) or if I want to use one of my other book ideas instead. I’ve been working off and on on my novels, and this would be a good excuse to really focus on them for at least a month. To be honest, this is the first year I’ve really had an opportunity to even consider doing NaNoWriMo. What have I been doing during November for the past several years? Let’s see…

• 2007: full time teaching at a high school = NO TIME
• 2006: full time teaching at a university = NO TIME
• 2005: full time advising at a university, teaching part time, and writing a thesis = NO TIME
• 2004: full time advising at a university, teaching part time, and taking graduate level courses = NO TIME
• 2003: full time working at a university, teaching part time, and taking graduate level courses = NO TIME

And the list pretty much continues on like that except that it gets into the undergraduate level coursework while working on campus full time, but at least at that point I wasn’t teaching. Still, it adds up to a lot of “no time” on my part to even work on my novels during the rest of the year let alone November. This year? Unemployed still, unfortunately. I haven’t heard back from the people at the temp agency yet (they said sometime early this week, and well, “early this week” ends tomorrow when it’s the “middle of this week”), and so for now I’m still an at-home-cat-lady. Since I’m an AHCL, I’ve got the time to consider writing a 50,000 word novel next month. Hell, even if I do get this job keeping track of inventory at a company, it’d be unlike any of the other jobs I’ve had in the past five years: I WON’T HAVE TO BRING WORK HOME WITH ME. No hours of grading papers until midnight. No having dinner with textbooks on my lap trying to write lesson plans while eating. Sure, I’ll be getting up early and working long hours, but those hours end as soon as the shift does, not eight hours later. Yup, this is my year to attempt (and likely fail) at NaNoWriMo. Now if only I could get some voice recognition software on my computer so I can work on my novels while crocheting… I like to multitask. 🙂

And a quick note related to crocheting but not writing, I seem to remember a while back mentioning having had to frog seventeen rows of the blanket I’m making for Katie. Well, I’ve made all of those rows back plus about fifteen. At this point, I’ve got somewhere around thirty rows left before putting the border on (something that’ll likely take a while since it’s large and complicated), and that feels like decent progress to me. It needs to get colder out sooner though; it’s really warm having a blanket bunched up on my lap while crocheting even more length to it. No wonder most crocheters who work on afghans wait until fall and winter.