Well.
So much for my self-imposed goal of writing a blog on the first and fifteenth of every month. Not that anyone paused mid-sip during the first cup of morning coffee on those particular days, and suddenly thought, “Gosh, I thought Cal was going to have a new blog posted today. That does it, my day is completely ruined. I’m going back to bed.”
Even so. This was the goal, and I do have high hopes that I can stick to that plan in the future. But I want to note that one of the reasons I haven’t been keeping up is because I’m hard at work on a different goal: writing a novel in a month. You see, November is National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a NaNoWriMo; see http://www.nanowrimo.org), an organized on-line challenge in which participants strive to reach a word total of at least 50,000 over the course of the month. There are no prizes at the end, no money is exchanged, but you do have the thrill of victory (or the agony of defeat, if you can’t keep up—and many find it difficult), bragging rights, and—most importantly—a first rough draft of a brand new fledgling novel.
I have a soft spot in my typing fingers for NaNoWriMo, because it just so happens that I wrote the first-ever draft of Being Henry David (my young adult book that’s coming out on March 1, 2013) during this challenge in 2009. It had moments I was proud of, and moments that truly sucked and were deleted during the first post-Nano read, but it gave me a start, and that’s what’s critically important.
And so, forgive me for being blog-less in Boston (until now), although in truth, I’m not all that contrite. I am thrilled to be working on my next young adult novel, Life Shards, even as we speak. I’m slightly behind the curve for where I should be (I’m about 28,000 words in), but so far, the process is fun and chugging right along. I’m writing to get the story out, losing myself in emotions and tangents and occasional in-story brainstorming, and have told my inner editor to take a mini-vacation to the Bahamas and leave me alone. So far, so good.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
or 
cal armistead 