November 2023

 It's November and in the past years, maybe not the recent past, I participated in the writing marathon that takes place every November. The last time I actually participated I started writing Disappearing. I think I finished a year and a half after that and I have been editing it with lots of pauses in between. 

The cool part about the marathon in November is that the clock fall back and we get an extra hour every morning. If I get up at the regular time, I have a whole extra hour to write, so that's what I would do. Get up, make a cup of tea, sit down and write for over an hour, sometimes two hours. The word count goal was 1667 and that is completely doable if you write lots of small words. Some days I would blow past it and other days I would barely hit the count. On weekends, which you’d think would be better for writing because I had those days off, I would not hit the goal. Those were the days I was happy to have some extra words banked. 

The stuff I wrote was not bad. It was only 1667 words a day. What it did do was allow me to focus on writing. Not to think about editing, or outlining something new, or how I wanted to publish, or what I should post on social media in the off chance I had an opportunity to publish based on the amount of followers and interaction I had with a growing fan base. I only had to sit down and write. When I was done, that was my post. At the time it was Twitter and I would add my days word count. For my self and not the couple of folks that I had connected to. Not into the void, but as a minimalist writing journal. No whining, no time for that. Just writing. 

That's where I’d like to get to for all my writing time outside of November. Just a process where I am always writing. Track how much I wrote, and then write some more the next day. I won’t always have an extra hour, but I can hit a 1000 word count without having to try too hard. Some days I’ll go over and some days I’ll go under but If I can do that consistently it’ll be good.  

So for books to read… I added so many to my TBR pile during an October 31st Terrify Your Tablet event. Hundreds of scary story writers made their work available for reading for free for one day only. The purpose. To give readers an opportunity to find new writers (at least new to them), and for the writers to reach an audience that they might not have before. I even participated by making my short novel, A Good Meal, released in 2015, free to download for a day. The result, I have almost 50 books that look great and I can’t wait to read and my book was downloaded by 1000 new readers. If even half of the folks who downloaded the book read it, then cool. 

Finished reading Never Whistle at Night and will share a bit of food with the shadows when eating outdoors at night from this point moving forward. 

Started reading Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott and loving how the walking house with chicken feet only surprises folks a little bit. 

I also started reading Slide into my DeMonS by Meg Garcia. Its one of the books I picked up from the Terrify your tablet event. Some spooky stuff and I just ran into a fun twist.  I'll drop a review when I am done - you can find it here. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196739937-slide-into-my-demons

I watched a few movies but one standout was SISU. A clearly, anti-nazi, super hero film about a man who just wanted to be left alone with his dog and his gold. The main character is as unstoppable as any horror movie slasher. It was gory with limited jump scares. It likely would not identify itself as a slasher, but it is. 

Cat Power Sings Dylan came out, and it's a pretty great recording. I love her voice singing the Dylan classics as she recreates the moment when Dylan went electric.

If you are writing this November - Good luck hitting your goals, hope you had fun, and bask in the glow of having written a lot of words. 

(Here’s a picture of me on November 4th 2010 (4:55 am) at the beginning of one of my earliest November writing marathon attempts. You can see how much fun I’m having. I wrote so many words on the vintage white Mac slab of a laptop.)