My Mission Statement

I write to serve, to unite, to educate. I write to share literature and flesh out ideas that may be of interest to others. I write to document an emotion, experience, or a blip in time. My mission is to write in such a way that the reader is reminded that we can find humor in all situations. It's one of the great blessings of life.


Sunday, October 19, 2008

Gulp--I registered

Many of you know that since July, I've taken a break from novel writing, and I've been primarily writing for magazines. Right now, I'm enjoying this pursuit a great deal, but I need to revisit novels again soon or I'll never go back. SO at the suggestion of many writer friends, I've decided to take the plulnge and commit to NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo, for those of you who don't know about it, is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Not a perfect novel, mind you. It's an exercise in discipline, to simply get about 1700 words down on paper every day for 30 days. Read more about it on the website, and if anyone out there has ever considered writing a novel, I highly recommend you register to participate. If any readers register, please let me know either through a comment or an e-mail. All you readers will, of course, take this journey with me.

Additionally, I begin a new course this Tuesday on writing picture books. It's interesting to me how this time last year (and for several years)I've been hammering away at my novels, but now I'm very excited about exploring more picture book writing and magazine work. Chautauqua certainly played a role in that, I think.

My children are all doing well, settled into the school year and so forth. We had a nice mellow day today after church--kid playing, football watching, catnapping, excessive snacking,trampoline jumping, spider project working, soup-making...the perfect autumn afternoon. Also all the soccer games were rained out yesterday, so the kids had lots of rest yesterday, too. All of a sudden our weekday schedules are crazy with four kids and soccer, dance,art, and scouts. We're so blessed to live in a tiny town where everything is close, there's only one soccer field, etc., so I have no idea how people do it in larger towns.

I went to a scrapbooking thing on Friday to learn about digital scrapbooking on my laptop only to find that my processor was too small to do it. That was a bummer, and it felt like such a waste of time, you know? But the thing is I had a great time with the other girls there, so I guess it wasn't really a waste. But it made me think about how seldom I actually waste time. I'm budgeting time and things down to the minute, and I ended up with nearly a whole day with nothing in particular I had to do. It was wierd. I wrote a lot, went on facebook, and ate a fair amount. It was fun, but I still felt guilty. I need to get over that.

WE finally finished counting Sally Foster--yee haw. I'm so grateful to NOT be pta president this year, just co-chair of SF. I've enjoyed volunteering at school IN the classrooms much more. Oh, btw, I'm supposed to teach a session in a psat preparation course on Tuesday morning on the essay part of the psat. But I read online today that it was eliminated in 2004 (the essay portion, not the whole psat). Does anyone out there know if that is true? PLEASE let me know if you know anything about that.

Well, I've successfully blogged about nothing, I suppose. Too bad I can't be as entertaining about nothing as Seinfeld. I can't even think of any redneck tips or anything. It's been a while on those, so I promise to get some out this week.

Also, anyone out there seen Nights in Rodanthe? It was filmed not too far from here, and we drove up there to see them when they were filming, so I'm dying to see the movie. Maybe we'll walk down one night this week. I hope they'll add another showing besides 7. It's just too hard to get everyone settled enough by 7 to do anything.

Have a great week. Consider NaNoWriMoing with me. xox

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've seen the movie. It was a little slow for my taste, but beautiful scenery. I thought of you guys the whole time...wait, maybe that's why I didn't get "into" the movie ;).

Lisa Romeo said...

I've taken the NaNoWriMo plunge, too, mainly to be sure I get 2,000 words a day on my current book project, which actually isn't a novel, but I don't think they'll kick me out for that!

I did one of these back in April, for National Poetry Month, writing a poem a day. Making that commitment is powerful.

Good luck on yours!

Write2ignite said...

I might do NaNo this year. It might just be the kick in the pants I need. Not sure my pants can take that much of a kick, though.

:) :)

Donna Jones Koppelman said...

C'mon, let's do it! We'll be in it together. Believe me, my pants are a little scared, too.

Anonymous said...

Hey Donna,

I did NaNo last year and thought it was great. (Difficult for a perfectionist like me to just write without stopping to revise every stupid sentence) Anyway, I signed up again this year and hope it will motivate me to write every day. My NaNo name is Jodycasella. Let me know yours and we can be buddies on the NaNo site.

--Jody from Chautauqua

Write2ignite said...

You are tooo funny, D. :) I really could use this to keep me really working.

I'm considering it... :)

hugs,
Donna


Isabel by Donna Jones Koppelman

Isabel by Donna Jones Koppelman

Major Bear at the Grove Park Inn by Donna Jones Koppelman

Major Bear at the Grove Park Inn by Donna Jones Koppelman