H.I.

No, that doesn't mean "hi" nor is it the postal abbreviation for Hawaii. It's my shorthand for Hurricane Irene.

After suffering through several Gulf Coast storms, including the infamous Katrina, my sympathies go out to everyone on the East Coast now enduring Hurricane Irene and her associated squalls, microbursts and tornadoes.

I spent a delightful weekend (with Tracy Hurley) on Connecticut's Long Island Sound two years ago at the SeaScape Writers Conference (think Sisters-in-Crime members Hallie Ephron, S.W. Hubbard and Roberta Isleib), and I hate the thought of that beautiful setting losing seashore, trees, and buildings. I do pray for little or no damage up there.

On the writing front, I've given myself a new challenge: Write a thousand words a day. Doesn't matter what it looks like, just get it down. I will do any research either before or after, but I will not stop to check out anything. I did read of a personal challenge where some writer was doing 10,000 words at a time. I certainly couldn't do that "every" day, but may once in a while. Whether a thousand or 10,000, of course, means I'll have to kick my son off the computer and shut the office door (maybe lock it) in order to get it done. I think that may be the only way I'll quit procrastinating, using gardening and remodeling as my excuses. Do I have the discipline? Let's see.

Okay, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to do the same.

cj

p.s. Of course, all those wonderfully ambitious writers who plan to participate in the November writing challenge, NaNoWriMo, have already given themselves a challenge of writing MORE than 10,000 words a day. They have to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. Way to go! Check it out at http://www.nanowrimo.org/.