I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve done it before, but this year I’m very excited because I took the time to plot out a book beforehand, mostly. I had about 3/4 of it plotted before I started writing on November 2.

(November first is a Holy Day of obligation for the Catholic Church and I don’t write on Holy Days or Sundays – those are days of rest.)

When I’ve done this in other years, I ended up “winning” (having 50,000+ words at the end of the month), but I didn’t end up with a book or even something that could be edited into a book. This year, I really think I can finish this and it will be a “real” book.

Because of my work with Crescent Moon Press, I had to miss a few days of my own writing, but today I’m only about 11,000 words from winning.

About a week or so ago, I read an article in the London Guardian (I think) that someone posted on Facebook. It was about Nora Roberts. I have to assume that if you are here, you know who she is, but for those few who always wander in looking for Doctor Who stuff, I’ll just say she is the Queen of the Romance Novel.

She’s super prolific and her fans are as fanatical as they come. I’ve been to several conferences in New Jersey that she attended back in the 90s, but I rarely stood in line to get her to sign a book because I always figured there were other authors just as worthy without the lines. I have this “Pie in the Sky,” “Pay it Forward” attitude that if I buy your book today, maybe you’ll buy mine when it comes out.

Anyway, I know lots of people love Nora, but I was always prepared to believe she was a prima donna or something. There are lots of reasons for this, which don’t matter now.

The point is that I read that she writes every day, all day, and something clicked in my head. I need to focus more on getting lots of words written every day.

This week, Thanksgiving week, my husband took the week off. He’s doing NaNo, too, and Monday we spent the whole day together. Our son had the week off, too, and he’d spent Sunday night with his grandparents. Steve and I went out to breakfast, then to lunch and sat together on our sofa and wrote all day. (We wrote in the coffee shop, too.)

I wrote over 6,000 words that day!

I think in terms of pages and that’s over 24 pages. A definite record for me.

The next day, Steve went to work because he had to teach a class, but even doing some laundry and cleaning the kitchen and going to the chiropractor, I wrote about 5,000 words – (approx. 20 pages). I proved that I could do this!

So I’m so excited about my new found productivity.

My critique group, The Rowdy Girls, has met a few times to just write. They were here last night and we worked for about four hours, just writing. Okay some talking, laughing and drinking wine, but I did end the day with 5,566 words written.

Heartla met today and we wrote for an hour.

After the meeting I had to run to Walgreens to get a Rx filled for my son. I had to wait, and fortunately there is an outlet near the chairs so I pulled out my computer, plugged her in and wrote.

When the prescription was done, the clerk apologized and asked if I’d just gotten all set up. I said no.

“I’m a writer so I try to get new stuff written whenever I can,” I said.

“I understand,” she said. “I’m a reader.”

I immediately pulled out my card and handed it to her and told her about our Readers’ Luncheon. You never know where you might find a new reader.

I hope she stops by here and says hello if she does. She made me smile today and gave me more motivation to get new words written!

Have a great day everyone, and please say hello if you stop by!

Recently, I had the good fortune to reconnect with two of my cousins on my father’s side through a group on Facebook for people with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). This is the disease that is on my father’s side of the family and which is the reason I had my transplant ten years ago.

I actually got a friend request from a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, but I figured she was a writer as a lot of my Facebook friends are writers. When I clicked on her page I saw her maiden name which is the same as mine and that she had, among her friends, a man with the same name as another of my cousins.

Before I had a chance to send her a message to ask if we were indeed related, I got a note from her saying she found me through the PKD group. It turns out she has a page on Facebook searching for a kidney donor as her PKD has worsened.

I thought this was such an exciting thing (Finding her and seeing that she’s taking a non-conventional route to finding a donor) that I sent a note to all my writing groups, sharing this information.

My email program must have a glitch because apparently, although I sent this about 15 days ago, people are just now responding and I’ve gotten some surprising comments.

In one group, the discussion quickly turned into a “rant” about how Facebook is terrible because of all the private information that is now available to anyone and how the world is all so “social” that real live, face to face, interactions are dying.

I started to write a response because I think some of that is wrong and some is true but not the fault of Facebook or even the Internet itself, but I decided that would serve no purpose. Instead, I decided to write a blog post instead.

Periodically, I find some of my friends on Facebook freaking out because “people can find your phone number” so easily. I’m not totally sure why this is so bad, but I guess these same people don’t remember that even though no one I know uses one anymore, phone books are still printed and they are specifically designed to allow people to find your phone number.

It used to be a thing. If you wanted to talk to someone to invite them out or give them information or just chat, you’d look up their name in the phone book and voila, there was their number! Plain as day, right in print!

How did we ever manage to avoid stalkers? And you know what, your address was right there, too!

Crazy.

Another criticism I’ve read of the Internet and Facebook in particular is that we’ve lost the ability to have face to face relationships because we’re living our lives virtually.

Well, I don’t have any scientific data on this, but personally, I don’t see how we can “live our lives virtually” for real. Most of us still have to leave our houses to go to work or to school, and we have to leave to do many things that are just part of life. I actually feel like I spend most of my time running errands when I’d rather be at home writing. The Internet/Facebook hasn’t changed the way I get groceries or pick up my prescriptions or go to the dentist. And I have to deal with people in all those arenas, face to face. Facebook hasn’t changed that.

However, something it has done is given me friends, true and real friends, in far away places. For instance, right now, I have a friend living in the Northeast who I met through a group of romance authors who were formerly in the military. She and I have shared our weight loss struggles and she sent me a message, through Facebook, that I inspired her to join Weight Watchers and we’ve been supporting and encouraging one another through messages back and forth.

I have another friend that I met in 2006 when I went to the RWA National Conference. She wishes she lived in France but she really lives in the Midwest. We’ve chatted about a lot of things and interests we share through Facebook and I don’t think we’d be this close if it weren’t for the Internet.

I’ve reconnected with family members spread far and wide, as well as high school and college friends. I’ve listened online to a radio station in Harrisburg, PA online because one of my dear college friends did the traffic in the mornings.

I don’t worry about stalkers, which seems to be a big concern with other people in regard to the amount of information and photos that go online. Facebook, for me, is a kind of backup for all my photos and scrapbook pages.

I understand there are weirdos out there who want to look at pictures of kids for sick reasons, but I don’t think it’s any riskier to put pictures of my kids out there for family and friends to see than it is to let them actually be outside. There have been sickos throughout time. Facebook didn’t create them. Any guy with a camera could take his own pictures of anyone’s kid if he really wanted to. I would rather that my friends could see how cute my kid is than worry.

Someone said that because of how easy and social the Internet is, people have forgotten how to write letters.

Nonsense.

I have moved five times since I got married and every time, I’d cry in my friends’ arms and they’d promise to write. I would get to my new home and be horribly lonely for my friends back home and write letters (this was back in the late 80s/early 90s – no easily accessible Internet) to the friends back home with my new address. I can count, 25 years later, the number of letters I received in reply on the fingers of one hand.

The Internet didn’t kill letter writing. Among most people, it was never quite as alive as those who are nostalgic believe. My mother was a great letter writer, and she would write me twice a week for years, until cell phones made it easier to call and postage kept going up and up. When I was young and in school, I wrote letters. Lots of letters, but rarely did I receive anything in reply, even from boys I was dating over summer vacation.

Some people just would never write letters, even without Facebook.

I realize that some people will never accept social networking, and that’s fine. For me, though, I always hoped the Internet would be a place to meet people and that’s what Facebook is.

Like everything, it can be abused and a few bad apples can spoil it. I just don’t think they are the majority and I don’t think any technology is inherently bad.

I welcome your thoughts.