National Novel Writing Month

Hooray! It's November and I'm writing my novel. I have over seven thousand words, and I haven't started a single one of the five papers I have to write for school this month! ALRIGHT! Right on schedule.

I moved from the idea of an informal collection of essays and fiction short stories of the time period, including the always easy to churn out fake poetry to writing a history text from the year 2080. How did this happen? I may move back to the more informal premise. But writing a text book from the future is fun! Oh well.

Wish me luck!

Very truly yours,
Sarah

Borges is Awesome

My philosophy teacher was telling us about Jorge Luis Borges the other day, and I just looked him up.

"Borges...employed two very unusual literary forms: the literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work. Both constitute a form of modern pseudo-epigrapha."

"At times, confronted with an idea for a work that bordered on the conceptual, rather than write a piece that fulfilled the concept, he wrote a review of a nonexistent work, as if it had already been created by some other person."
source

In Dr. Martin's words, Borges would "come up with fascinating ideas for books, but was too lazy to write them. So he just reviewed them as though they had already been written." Brilliant. This guy has given me a gateway to literary laze and creativity. Yay!

Also, it is Tim's birthday and I am planning a birthday surprise! I sure love that guy.

Very truly yours,

Sarah

Good Things for Now

It feels great to be caught up at work and at school. Summer session and my time at Houston Community College will come to an end in a couple weeks and I will have a week vacation before starting at St. Thomas. In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of thrifting, and still have more to do. I plan to try a strategy where I try to thrift a whole outfit - it will be easier to search for plain, quality items this way, I think, rather than just grab things that look fancy and loud.

I'd like to throw this website out there that I found through Springwise, my favorite 'idea' blog. It is called the Jolkona Foundation, and it helps you locate and contribute monetarily to projects in impoverished areas around the world. I hope to be able to help, as it allows a very tangible experience. For example, one project for Indian mothers has a price tag of $235 and gives you updates for three and a half years about the mother and child. But not all are so expensive - there are plenty under $50, and lots of them are just $5 to plant a tree in various places. My personal favorite that I am going to make room for in my budget next month is this one: Providing Education to the Females of Afghanistan. It is only $40, and for six months to a year you get photos and report cards from the young lady's education as proof! There is only a 14% literacy rate for Afghani women, which is unacceptable. I can't wait to donate!



On a sad note, yesterday I resigned from the Crossroads volunteer program. I hated to do it, but I cannot seem to get my schedule straight and it isn't fair to the kids. I hope to resume volunteering with the kids when I graduate.

A question to you three readers out there: does anyone plan to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year? I hope to be the Houston Inner-loop Liaison again and am wondering if I can drum up some support, whether local or online! I'm really stoked about plans for my novel this fall, as it'll be a companion piece to my post-global-pandemic novel from last year. Hooray for writing!

Getting out of here as fast as possible after that dorky paragraph,
Sarah

Nirvana on the Way to Almost-Thanksgiving Work

I'm having lunch with my mother today. She is really such a delight. I hope that she always retains the mischievous and good-hearted energy she has now. I'm experimenting with confiding in her more; it doesn't seem to be backfiring quite yet. We'll see how that goes.

Over 40,000 words on my novel! And only six days to go. Yikes. But 10k in six days only requires me to write the standard nanowrimo minimum per day - 1667. I'm definitely going to do more than that, so I should come out ahead! Oh joy, oh delight.

I'm going to Tim's parents for a short (really!) time this Thursday. I've never been to a guy's parents for this holiday before. In fact, most of my relationships over the last 10 years of dating have faded out by fall, and I had the holiday season to think about what I'd done. Ha. Then it's off to Willis to celebrate with my aunt and cousins, whose darling company I always enjoy.

This cheese-filled post was brought to you by Sarah having too much energy to sit still and code her invoices.

Very truly yours,
Sarah