When I was in Alaska, someone told me about NaNoWriMo. I have to think that it was my professor and friend Rosanne. Who else besides your writing instructor believes that there is no such thing as too much writing practice?

At that point in time I am pretty sure I had enough projects on the go to keep me busy until ... well ... now.

At this point in time, I am apparently inactive enough to actually consider that writing 50,000 words for the fun of it is a feasible pastime for the next 24 days. Or maybe it's that I have run out of legitimate sources of procrastination to keep me from pulling out my shelves of flying books and studying for all the exams that I have to redo in order to convert my US "licenses" to Canadian "licences."

Regardless, today at training, as I was hurtling down an icy shoot on my stomach at 112.94 kph, I thought to myself "Hey, it's November. I believe November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. Compared with other phases of my life, I currently have a relatively free amount of time and, for some inexplicable reason, feel compelled to participate."

Uhh ... yeah ... so ... I'm gonna write a novel this month ... you know ... because ... OK, seriously ... do I really have to explain the things I do? Timbuktu, University of Alaska, skeleton, NaNoWriMo ... it's another one of those things that's just begging to be done. And if not me, who? Oh, and also, I am doing it for the glory.

Now, now. Before you all pull out your sharpies in anticipation of my first book signing at Chapters, please remember NaNoWriMo's description of the mission:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap.

And if you actually want to read my NaNoWriMo-inspired crap ... it's right here. In case you are wondering, I am writing a mainstream fiction story about a chick named Lexi who has about as much clue as to what's going to happen to her as I do.

Ahhh. Another day in the life of me. What's that age-old adage again? Oh yeah. Normal is overrated ...