The day before NaNo

Twas the day before NaNo and all through the house was much sticking and grumbling as I scittered about like a mouse. The Halloween party had left quite a mess and here and there guests had left parts of their dress.

Cups and bottles, returnables galore, I wasn't sure which chore I disliked more. With much sweeping, vaccuming and mopping ahead, I really just wanted to curl up and go back to bed. But there were decorations, seven totes of them, to put away before I could begin my novel the very next day.

With visions from our awesome regional kick off party engergizing me to write, I began to clean in hopes of finishing before night. The morning would bring the challenge to produce 1667 words and I knew more than half of them would resemble turds. But that's ok, that's what Nano's about, thinking up the story, writing it down, getting it out.

And now with much work ahead for the day, I must stop this horrible attept to rhyme and go on my way. Tomorrow we write!

Attack of the Young Writers Pt 2

We had our second meeting today. I was thrilled to see that my 'do you REALLY want to participate' speech had sunk in and decreased my number by twenty-some. Thirty odd kids who really want to be there is way easier to manage for me. I happily went about our planning meeting with a smile and answered questions from enthusaistic young writers.

Our meeting wrapped up with lots of grins and chattering about cover art they'd all be working on over the weekend. They promised to be back on monday for our first day of actual novel writing. With our satisfying meeting concluded, I packed up my supplies and headed to the office to squirrel them away until monday's meeting.

That's when I happened upon the 'oh crap, that was today?' face of one of the teachers. Again. And I'd even gone in before school even started (because I was there for a special parent student donut breakfast thing we do) to remind all the teachers that we had a meeting a lunch time. But no. I still had a missing group who'd never been down to see me. Ahhhh!

I ended up doing a very quick classroom pitch. Yep, you guessed it, I'm back around forty-five kids again.

We'll see how many show up on monday when the real writing starts.

On tomorrow's agenda: Our regional NaNoWriMo kickoff party with an unbelievable amount of RSVPs over last year. It should be fun!

Attack of the Young Writers

I arrived a little early to my first Young Writers Program meeting with my stack of writing workbooks and my bag of prizes to entice the students. And I waited.

And waited.

Just when I thought the teachers I had distributed the flyer to last week had forgotten the YWP entirely, twelve kids showed up. Hooray!

Twelve is a nice number. Nice and personal. Then I realized they were all from one class. This meant I had three missing class groups. Oh crap.

I waited a little bit but no one else came so we proceeded with the intro. These were all fourth graders who I'd not worked with before. They were quiet and listened really well. At the end of our half hour together, they were excited and promised to be back on friday. I was thrilled.

I went to hunt down the three other teachers and found them all together in the lounge with looks of 'oh no!' on their faces when they caught sight of me. "Was that today?"

"Uh huh."

"We thought it was next week! Do you have an extra half hour? We'll send our kids right down."

"Sure." My day was crammed and I was pressed for time, but I figured half an hour wouldn't kill me.

Ten minutes later, thirty-five kids file into the library. Thirty-five. And these are only fifth graders. There's still one mystery quantity of fourth graders to be discovered on friday.

I'd learned my lesson last year when fifty kids showed up the first day, rabid for pizza and prizes. Umm, nooooo. The pizza party is at the end, after you earn it and the only way to get prizes is to earn them by writing. That announcement got rid of almost half of them.

So this year, I didn't even mention prizes or pizza on my flyer. Yet, the kids still showed up in droves. I spent my extra time with my eager and ultra inquisitive fifth graders doing my best to instill that this program involved writing. Lots of writing. There would be pizza and prizes, but ONLY after a lot of writing.

When I got done with my not near as enticing pitch as I'd given the forth graders, I came out and asked, "How many of you still really, really want to do this program? How many of you will be here for our planning meeting on Friday and be ready to write on Monday?"

Every darn one of them raised their hand.

I love that the teachers adore this writing program and that so many students want to particiapte, but holey moley. This is going to be a very long November. Or a blur. Let's aim for a blur, shall we?

Prepping for NaNo

I give up. Avoiding posts about NaNo isn't working since it's taking up a good part of my free and no so free time. I'll probably be waxing on about NaNo for the next month or so. Sorry.

Knowing it will be taking over my life, I've begun the last stages of NaNo preparation. I'm not talking about outlining, character sketches or research. When the time comes to write, I'll write. I'm talking about the serious stuff that will be neglected when this 50k in thirty days washes over me, pulls me under and spits me out on the shores of December.

I spent my weekend catching up on my laundry. My family and I will now be able to get by an extra week or so when I forget to toss a load in here and there throughout the month. I payed all my bills through the middle of November. I did a litle extra cleaning because we'll be going to bare minimum real soon. I got all my business financial reports caught up - I hate doing those and was, well, eight months behind. Oops! I spent extra time with my family. I got everyone's halloween costume ready and mine started. Best of all, I'm now halfway done with the nine hundred christmas craft kits I need to do for my daughter's school.

Not that I neglected NaNo in my preparations. I packed all my goody bags for my regional kick off party next Saturday. All my raffle prizes are sorted into my thankfully huge stash of reusable shopping bags - one for each of the two Young Writers Program schools, kick off, weekly write-ins, our all day write-in, and the TGIO party.

And now with a bunch of stuff crossed off my mental to-do list, I can move forward into NaNo with a somewhat clear head. Which begins.... today at noon with my first YWP prep meeting.

Deep cleansing breath.

What do you do to prep for NaNo?

Unexpected house guest

When I built my new, bigger, better pond this past spring, I hoped some wildlife would visit it. I was not disappointed. One frog led to two and then we released our two tadpole to frog Boy Scout project frogs into the pond. Next thing we know, we have six frogs and probably more. It's hard to tell them all apart except by size and only one is quite large. The rest are very similar.

The frogs have been a great source of amusement for the kids and myself. Each time we go out to feed the pond fish (four of the ten .10 gold fish that have survived in the pond), we count how many frogs splash into the pond rather than fall into the shadow that is giant mankind. The largest frog has become rather imune to our presence and gives off a 'Yeah, whatever. Feed the fish and leave us alone' vibe.

This has been fun and educational all summer long. But now it's fall and with the frosty temperatures, my friendly frogs seem to be looking for warmer places to hang out. Like under my house.

See, I have a tiny, dirt crawlspace rather than a much needed basement. We're used to chipmunks and mice skittering around under there dispite our best efforts keep their numbers down by feeding them the green pellets of doom. The favorite spot for tiny clawed feet seems to be the external lip around my main floor bathroom's tub. I'm not sure who's brilliant idea it was to install a tub with easy bottom access to all wildlife, but I'd love to track them down and have a word or two. Nothing is more relaxing than a nice hot bath and the skitter scratch of little rodents throwing a luau in the unexpected burst of heat.

Our furnace is down there. That makes for a nice warm place for all sorts of creatures. Including, apparently, frogs,- as we discovered when doing the annual fall furnace check. Let's just hope they are going there to hibernate rather than to sing to each other at night or do battle with the furry rodents who prance around my tub.