Giving Birth

The irony of eating a whole jar of bread and butter pickles today was not lost on me. All morning as I prepared to start my new novel, for the NaNoWriMo, I kept craving something savory. I made so many trips to the fridge I finally gave myself a break and brought the pickle jar to my desk. Writing the first few words of Costa Azul felt exactly like giving birth. High on the list was the insecurity of can I really do this.

Before I could write a word I had to give myself a good talking to. I had to convince myself that what NaNo is all about is getting the story out not writing the perfect manusript on the first draft. Not going back and playing with which word sounds better, no editing as I write--just story telling and a fat bloated ugly first draft is okay because it's going to have many rewrites. That's how books are written--with many, many rewrites.

So, 698 words later I've made the start The word count isn't as much as I'll need to accomplish on a daily bases in order to reach the 50,000 goal but the fear is squelshed for the time being and I'm happy.

I deleted out of the previous post the cute little runner holding the pencil that keeps track of the word count. It seemed to slow downloading the page a lot. If I find a solution, I'll repost it. It's really great technology how it will automatically keep track of the words but too slow.

Off the writing subject--Julian's big news is--he was bitten by a scorpion last night. It was in his bed. A new construction has started across the street and all the little critters that were living on site have moved over to our house. We've had snakes and lots of scorpions. The scorpion zapped him in the arm. Julian was very brave. Johnny was fast at putting some rescue cream and ice on it. We didn't have an antihistimine so cold tylenol took its place. Julian always remembers to shake out his sneakers before putting them on and now he'll have to remember to shake out his bed sheets. We all will until the cooler weather starts.