November...

...has whizzed by, hasn't it? I've been doing NaNoWriMo(nth-and-a-half), hoping to finish a scratchy first draft of a novel by mid-December, for workshopping purposes (well, I'm hoping ROR will reveal to me the novel towards which this draft is directing its stabbings-in-the-dark), and I'm up to nearly 40K—I definitely won't make the 50K needed to 'win', but I will have 40K+ words on a new novel that I didn't have before, which is a good feeling, especially as I've been eyeing off this novel for, well, too many years now.

Not being on the Literature Board is starting to make a difference—I most certainly wouldn't have had the time to do this, and all the associated reading (this is a novel that requires research—much more research than I've managed to do along the way) if I'd had to read for the Publication and Promotion Grants meeting. Although, going to the Writer Emeritus Award last week, in the midst of the November meeting, made me remember anew how great it was to sit in a room with all those intelligent people nutting out just how we were going to benefit the maximum number of writers with the little pot of money we had. (The Emeritus Award went to poet Robert Gray, who gave a wonderful speech and also read us a poem.)

My God, we're looking down the throat of the Christmas already! And then there's reading for ROR, and then there's ROR, and then there's Sea Hearts/The Brides of Rollrock Island publication. Better get this novel-drafting out of the way soon, to make way for all that.