Hey! I’m at mamazine.com! Or an essay I wrote is, anyway. It’s one of those things that people who know me in real life will read and go, “okaaaay,” while people who know me on the internet will say, “well, yeah, sure.” Now you’re itching to read it, aren’t you? It was inspired by a series of posts at Inkstains (here! and here!).

That other essay? The one I was trying to justify abandoning before I started? I decided to write the thing, because I had done all the getting-ready-to-write business, and it felt like a good idea to just make myself write the durned thing. So I wrote it. And THEN I abandoned it, as it would have to be described less as ‘humorous’ and more as ‘self-loathing.’ Apparently I’m not so much amusing when I have unresolved issues. Go figure. Maybe I’ll dust it off another day, take it in a new direction. Or maybe the sad little file will sit unopened for the rest of the computer’s natural life. Could go either way.

But you! You need some motivation to write, don’t you? I know I’ve heard some of you mention that you have fictional aspirations (er, the desire to write fiction, that is), and it’s NaNoWriMo time again! You know, National Novel Writing Month. Where you and thousands of people you’ve never met before and/or your closest friends all commit to write a novel in the month of November. It’s both quite fun and a bit maddening. (And if you still don’t know what I’m talking about, you can always read the official explanation.)

Now that I’ve provided you with ample reading material (for the next 14 minutes), I’m going to go knit a hat. Because I have yarn, and why not? I’ll let you know how it turns out. Or I’ll knit half a hat and then forget about it for the next several days. But either way, you know, there will be knitting.