Back in Snowy Seattle

Well actually, the dusting of snow that covered cars, rooftops, lawns, and fenceposts when I returned from my Thanksgiving holiday in climatically stabler southern California, greeting me with an inviting and seasonal ambiance of winter coziness, has by now mostly melted away, but it was a delightful surprise on my arrival.

The time spent with various immediate family members over the past few weeks was pleasant and largely relaxing, and included several opportunities to converse with successful writers of both the screenwriting and the novelist variety, which was inspiring and encouraging. This in addition to yummy food, bike rides, board games, Irish dancing, pillow fights, evenings in the jacuzzi, and afternoons reading by the crackling fireplace, all of which were quite lovely.

My one regret is that my NaNoWriMo progress, which had made its way from nearly hopeless to promisingly possible over the days preceding my departure from Seattle, was unsalvageably derailed, leaving me at 20,123 words as the deadline descends, 29,877 words short of my goal. However, I have adjusted my expectations and set a new and conceivable but still challenging schedule to reach the 50,000 word mark by the date of my return trip home for Christmas, which will leave me without the glory of an official NaNoWriMo finishing participant, but nevertheless the proud author of what will hopefully be the somewhat meaty bones of a potentially publishable novel by the end of the year.

Note: If you have told me you want to see it when I'm ready to show people, I must warn you that I have a charitable policy to discount people's requests to read my work as mere politely feigned interest until the third or fourth repetition, so ask me a couple more times if you were actually in earnest, and I will happily share with you the fruits of my literary labors.

In other news, I have recently somewhat adjusted my perspective on the proper goals and capacities of blogging as a written form, transitioning from my previous view of the medium as being simply an abridged, electronic version of my physical personal journal entries, which had begun to get somewhat repetitive, to a new view more focused on fleeting glimpses and witty yet whimsical observations of a more transitory, less excruciatingly detailed nature. I anticipate that this shall result in my posts being increasingly enjoyable, or at the very least mercifully shorter. Hopefully this is a positive change in the eyes of my anonymous but undoubtedly numerous and avid readers, but I welcome any and all contributions--concurring, protesting, or indifferent--on the topic of the most appropriate approach to the blogging process.