National Novel Writing Month

I said I'd never do it, but I just did. I signed up for a marathon. 30 days, 50,000 words....it's called Nanowrimo and it stands for National Write a Novel Month. Thousands of people all over the world have joined- 174 in my area alone. Lucky for me, I work at a cosmetics company so I have easy access to under eye concealer because I don't see myself getting much sleep in the coming month.

Are there prizes? No, not really. Nothing consequential. Do I know what I'm going to write about? Um, no. Not really. Is there something fantastically absurd about plundering off into the cold November night alongside thousands of people I've never met, typing with purpose for no concrete reason? Yes, yes and yes.

Reject me not

For the 2nd year in a row, little Beaver has been declined a scholarship to the elevated wonderland of the Breadloaf Writer's Conference at Middlebury College. She went once as a matted teenager, with jean shorts and high hopes, but it would seem that the value of her fiction has decreased since the glory days of that long-ago August. Ever since she pulled herself out of the gloppy slops of mopey land and traded in self-absorbed, depressing words for the dark and comic, it's been no-thanks and few wins with each application.

Oh well. Beaver has a garden and a duck and her beloved Domo, snuggled inside a drafty, magic cabin. Her words drift up the chimney into the thick night where they mingle with mosquitos and fly, faraway, far.

Une bonne nouvelle

Domo's new film, Return to Labradoria, just got accepted to the Aspen Film Festival. This is exciting on numerous levels: the festival is très, très prestigious, Domo has never been to Colorado, and with Beaver Creek nearby, little B. is sure to find a lot of furry-minded friends building kick-ass dams.

We will most certainly be holding a ginormous bakesale in order to get ourselves to Aspen. Either baked goods or beef jerky, whichever we master by April.

The second time around

Beaver is working on a new novel about living in the country. It will document the trials and tribulations of a cosmopolitan faced with wooded acreage, evangelical neighbors and an influx of Subarus. She can't think of a title. Can you?