As of last Thursday, I am a 2009 NaNoWriMo winner. As of midnight tonight, I will be a verified winner, which means the site will count my words and then change my little status bar that shows my total word count from green to purple and I will be able to print out a winner’s certificate and all sorts of fun things. I actually can already get to them because of a glitch in the system, but I like to play by the rules. ^_^ I will also have access to a lovely Winner’s t-shirt, which I will add to my Christmas list and hope someone is nice enough to send to me. (I wear a unisex medium, by the way… I’m just saying, in case, y’know? ~_^)

I’m going to keep writing for the rest of the month, though; the story is interesting enough now, and I kind of like my characters, but there’s still a huge gulf in the middle that is supposed to be The Road Trip. I might save myself from this problem by going back and just giving my characters a pair of plane tickets so I don’t have to deal with charting a course. Or maybe they start to road trip, decide it’s not what they want, and go back to get tickets… or maybe they’ll pack their camping gear and rent a car at the Portland airport, since their ultimate destination is northern Oregon. Yes, I think we can just get rid of the Middle of the current story and it will do just fine. Who needs a road trip, anyway? Not these two.

Another cool thing that happened this week was that my little story synopsis was selected by the NaNoWriMo staff to be given to a New York graphic designer to make a cover for my book. Of course, it’s not a “real” cover for publication, but it’s a fun souvenir of my story this year. Plus they’re only picking 30 people out of about 165,000 so it’s awesome that they picked me. It probably helps that I labeled my story “chick lit” this year, too, as I doubt that’s a huge genre… That’s it up at the top, in case you were wondering. I think it’s hilarious. ^_^

Today I didn’t find something good about Hawai’i (which is my goal every day), so I will count the fact that the kitties are now adjusted enough that they’re both hanging out downstairs with me; they’re both sitting on the table at the moment so they can keep an eye on me, I think. I’ve given up trying to keep them off of it, so as long as they don’t get up there when we eat and I wipe it down before I use it, I think I’m okay with this. After all, sometimes you have to pick your battles.

Before I sign off, I would like to issue a general apology: I have been terrible at getting in touch this month, I know. And I’m usually short and slightly irritable when I do talk to people. For that, I apologize. Please chalk it up to nearly 60,000 words before Thanksgiving and lots of time in front of the computer to do it. I promise I’ll be back to normal in December. No, really, I will!

If I don’t talk to you before then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. ^_^