This and That

Okay, updates!

On Prayer

We started a new prayer group at church tonight that I'm pretty excited about.  There are only a handful of us so far, but it was still amazing for me.  We talked, raised concerns for people, and we'll be doing a study using a book for prayerful healing.  At the end, when we prayed aloud, it was awesome.  That spontaneous feeling of praying as I felt led to pray aloud was just new and incredible.  I'm so looking forward to seeing what God has in store for this group!

NaNoWriMo

As some of you may recall, last year I participated in NaNoPoBloMo, which was National Blog Writing Month.  NaNoPoBloMo is actually a spin off of NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month and also takes place during the month of November.  A few excerpts from their website:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

For someone who has always hungered to write, this could be an incredible thing.  I have had a title for my first Christian fiction book forever and I have a rough plot.  I'm trying to work out a few issues with characters and plot in the next two months before insanity starts.  I'll also need to figure out how many words per day and per week I'll need to type in order to make the goal.  The only major thing, other than Thanksgiving and JJ's birthday, that occurs in November is kid's Christmas shopping, so I think if I'm going to do NaNoWriMo, I will need to slate toy store shopping for the end of October, because the beginning of December in a toy store???  Nu uh!  I will keep you all updated on if I am going to do this thing and then if I am, know that there may be few blog entries that have more than a word or two of desperation and insane musings.

School

Yes, people, school started last week.  After a day of happy dancing, I set to work reclaiming my house, ie cleaning up summer and am still at it.  I start out the summer trying to keep up with the "breadcrumbs" the kids leave throughout the house (legos on the floors, models on every table in sight, stuffed cats everywhere, sticky counters, floors, tables, you get the picture) and eventually run myself ragged and finally decided "To hell with this!  It never ends!"  So, by mid-July, I have given up until the day they board the buses once more.

In sadder school news, one of my favorite teenagers in the world has set off to college, two hours away.  This kid has been singing next to me in the praise band since he was ten and I have always referred to him as "an old soul".  As he pointed out to me on the mission trip, I have never treated him like a child, but as an equal, because, well, he just was!  We had similar interests and similar opinions and I'm already missing the living daylights out of him.  He's just always been one of my favorite people and I wish him every success.

Now, how about a pic or two from Amish country to end the night?