And so it (almost) begins!

Less than 24 hours until the start of November! And it's Halloween!

I am a big fan of fall. The slight chill to the air, the changing colors going from the greens of the summer to oranges, reds, and browns, and who could forget the fantastic food that comes around?? We have Halloween, today, (which is the epitome of hypocrisy, little kids asking strangers for candy, women encouraged to dress (even more) like prostitutes, and it's OK to scare the poor little kids) with it's cider and truckloads of candy (mmm) and coming up on it's heels is Thanksgiving.

This will be the second year we spend Thanksgiving without my grandmother, which is always difficult, but it's starting to get easier. The food, the family, the warmth... it's something I truly enjoy. And, since I'm pregnant, I get a guilt-free card to eat all I want, even a second or third helping of pumpkin pie! ^^

And of course, NaNoWriMo. How could anyone forget that? The month out of the year where it's OK to completely ignore family, friends, life in general, in order to push yourself further into the folds of becoming a writer. Best part? Most everyone understands! Especially once explained. Last year, which was my first year of attempting NaNo, I had lots of people give me funny looks and ask just what the hell was I thinking. Oh they had faith in be, don't get me wrong, but when you think about it, writing 50,000 words or more, in only thirty days, does seem a bit... insane. I spend the entire month of October researching, plotting, and detailing out my world, characters, and little pieces that I need to know in order to write effectively. I feel more prepared this year than I do last year, even though last year I had the entire story plotted out. This year, I have my characters more developed (just last night I found my Bad Guy name -whew!-), and I have a basic idea of where the end of the story will end up, but I only really plotted out the first half. There are so many roads this story could take, and I wanted to leave it up to the characters. So that's what I'm doing.

Which, by the way, totally pisses my Inner Editor off! Muwhahahaa.

For most of November, I will be on doc ordered bed rest, so I have very little excuse not to win this year. Even with an active almost-three-year-old on my back and two little gymnasts in my belly. My goal this year it to actually hit 100k, not just 50k. Yep, that's pretty damn insane, but it's only 3k words a day as opposed to roughly, 1.6k. If I don't hit 100k... well, I'll still have won by hitting 50! So that's my goal for NaNo....

Now... What are you dressing up as for Halloween, if anything? Are you going trick -or- treating? Or just tricking? >:)