Sunday, September 24, 2006

Here's the really scary thing: I haven't finished reading a book since I finished The Book Thief for my last blog entry. My life is so busy right now, I don't have time to do half of the things I need to get done, much less the things I want to do.

Most of my time is spent on work: planning, correcting, etc. The rest of it seems to be spent on dogs. The young Labs need so much exercise, which we knew when we got them. But still...we walk about 5 miles a day with them and on top of that, they play like crazy. They run and they wrestle and they play tug-of-war. They have so much energy. It's adorable and it's frightening.

I've been trying to finish writing my most recent novel, and it's been really slow going. I planned to have it done by the end of the summer, of course, but things ran over just a little. But I figured it wasn't a big deal since the first few weeks of school are generally a little slower than the full-fledged school year. Alas, not so. Adapting to the school year takes a ton of energy, and the dogs on top of it made little time for the last few chapters. I still have about 10 pages left to write. I did get one done yesterday in between the little puppy's class and dinner with friends and laundry and grocery shopping and etc. I hope to get a few pages in today, but I've stopped thinking that I'll actually finish this month.

OF course, I do have November to look forward to. National Novel Writing Month is November, and I will once again attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I did it for the first time last year and I was successful, which is inspiring for this year. I've convinced my wife and my friend John and my cousin Scott and the Yams to do it, too, so hopefully Minneapolis will kick butt in the number of words written category. Last year we were second to Virginia. I don't think it's fair that they get their whole state and we get just our city, but I suppose they go by number of people enrolled. And since Virginia isn't the most literate state...Kidding. I'm just kidding.

So I look forward to November. Mostly because I'm dying to see what Mara will write. I think she'll probably finish 50,000 words. I know she'll be dissatisfied with them. And I know she'll be cranky most of the month. But I really think it'll be a great experience.