This year, I really will keep a blog!

Let's see, November was NaNoWriMo (which I won for the third year in a row!), and December was the frickin' holiday season... so that's why I haven't written an entry since the end of October.

After Thanksgiving, my two older kids, my daughter's boyfriend, and one of their other friends talked me into opening a Facebook account. Last Sunday, we finally convinced my younger son to open one. My two sons and I sat in my living room, each of us on our own laptop, playing with Facebook. So on a whim I looked up one of my closest college friends and sent her a Friend request. She responded, and then passed my name on to others. It's been a mini college reunion since then. It's funny - Facebook was created for people to keep in touch with their college friends, and that's what I'm doing. Never mind how long ago I graduated!

In my mind, I'm always a writer. That's why I want to keep a blog. That's why I do NaNoWriMo. All I have to do is keep working at it. If I'd kept to my original life plan, I'd already be a published author, but you know what John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Instead of being a successful writer, I'm a divorced mother of three grown children, with my own home and a full-time job. My car's paid for, and my house has a new roof. I suppose things could be a lot worse.

But this year's NaNoWriMo novel is a mystery, something which might actually find a reading audience. My first one was a whimsical fantasy, very fluffy, with fairies and a group of pagans working together to make the world (or at least a small part of it) a better place. My second one was a postapocalyptic one I've been working on in my head for over ten years. When I hit the required 50,000 words, I was about halfway finished. It's very dark; a lot of good people die, so I find writing it very hard going.

The third one, though, is the best yet. I'm not going to discuss it except to say that I've set it in Cambridge, MA and I drop in a lot of local color. My main character is a single woman of around 30. It's the first one I've written in which my MC doesn't have kids. I'm thinking about adding a woman of around my age in my MC's workplace, just so I can use my Mom-voice.

All I have to do now is set up a time to write and actually do it. Getting up a couple of hours early won't work; I already get up at 5:30 a.m. to get to work. So it'll have to be after work. When I get home in the evening, all I can think about is sitting in the recliner with a cat or two in my lap, reading or watching TV. I'm showing my age, aren't I?