Possible year end/new year post

Ooh, yay! I wrote a chapter yesterday! Yippee yippee yay! It's short, but I dig it. Sooo nice to be back in the writing groove after all the holiday madness and travels. We're snowed in, which is awesome, but it looks like a wet snow that won't hang out for too long, unfortunately. Jim and I love to be snowed in -- apologies to those who need to go places. A snow-in is an occasion for a big pot of soup and a pie, yes? Only, we've had too much pie lately, so scratch that this time around, you know, with New Years and a new leaf just around the corner.

I love a new year. I love a new week, even -- Mondays feel like a time for beginnings, for making new commitments, you know? So, a new year is like the emperor of Mondays, the perfect time to spiff up one's life and routines, make new routines, break some bad habits, start fresh. It is possible to form new habits -- as proven by the fact that since painting the bedroom and getting new linens back in June, we have made the bed every day. Which, er, wasn't the case before. Nothing like new bed linens to entice one to make the bed every day! So: what is the life equivalent of new bed linens? How to spiff up your life? Your writing habits? *Shrugs.*

January and February have always been good creative times for me, at least as long as we've lived in Portland. We moved here January nine years ago, and shocked by the cold (which now feels natural), we stayed in and made art for the next several months. (And worked on the house, which was less fun, but just as rewarding.) And then when I sold my art at the Saturday Market for several years, the market would end for the season at Christmas and not reopen until March, leaving January and February as creative development months. I've always thought NaNoWriMo should be in January. I think November is a terrible month for it, though I did do it last year -- and I won!!! I have not to this day, however, read what I wrote last November!!! It was sci fi, and featured a ballerina. There were some very cool ideas involved, but I suspect the execution left much to be desired. Much much much.

The book I am working on now is one I began not long after that NaNo manuscript. In early January I went with two writer friends to a beautiful house in Manzanita, at the Oregon coast, and wrote for two days, getting a real start on this book. It was exciting! I was also in the early months of pregnancy and had my only bout of [mild] morning sickness there. Oh, and I slept under a skylight and woke up to condensation dripping on my face. Eek! For which reason we did not put a skylight over the crib in Clementine's little room.

What a ramble of a post! No matter. It's back to writing lickity split.

How much do I love that it snowed for New Year? LOVE it -- it's like a visual blank canvas for the coming year. New habits to form, new leaves to turn. Books to finish. And a whole new splendid year of baby firsts, speaking of which, Clementine rolled over yesterday for the first time!! Jim and I have realized that perhaps we're not doing her any favors in the development department by holding her all the time, ha ha, so we're getting a bit more serious about tummy time, and yay, she rolled over. It was adorable, and has not yet been repeated. Man, I love that little squidge :-)

Possibly I'll write a more coherent year end/new year post, but considering the blogging deficiency lately, possibly not. For now, I have characters to manipulate.

Happy day!