I am currently at NanoWriMo's, "Night of Writing Dangerously" and it is so exciting to be in a room with 200 other writers. This is a great, wonderful, loving community, and I will be taking some author photos soon with a pro photographer as I put together a sort of press kit for my novel! I'm also coordinating with a book designer from New York to do the cover!

Yes, I am working on a novel for this year's NanoWriMo entitled, "The Bridesmaid" and it's all about Mabel Jo, love interest from, "Never the Bride" falling in love with one of her best friends and acting to sabotage the happiest moment of her life (after she's asked to be her Bridesmaid.)

I am about 150 pages deep into my novel and I have grown to just adore Mabel Jo. She's basically my dream woman in fiction form. Deadpan, cynical, a borderline alcoholic who drowns her sorrows only because her heart secretly swells and bursts with so much romance and love and lust that she can't bear it when she's rejected.

She's rough and femme and sexy and a writer. In black negligees and smudged eyeliner.

My fucking GOD I would sleep with my fictional protagonist in a second.

Writing this novel, I have found a renewed vigor and passion for writing I have not had in years. Mabel Jo, jealous over marriage and confused about her future, wondering if she will have children, is able to voice my confusion and frustration over such matters in a healthy, peaceful way for me to express.

Writing this novel is one of the last things keeping me together as my world falls apart...when I feel anxious about my future in New York, other concerns I probs won't speak about in a public entry, when I feel upset that my family didn't pick me up from the airport on this most recent trip home and my mother decided to separate from my stepdad over it.

I feel like everything is going to shit, but the one thing that is ferrying me onward is my insatiable passion for writing. As a child, I could escape in stories and lose my way to distract myself from bad home situations, and now it seems as a grown woman I can escape in writing them to trick myself into having faith.

And I find that I can't help but just do it, just do it, just keep following my heart and my instinct as I write like any animal would as it flies south for the winter. Here in my world, Mabel can be bitter and drink all the Merlot and Jack Daniels on earth, but at the end of the story, there will be a sweet lovergirl waiting just for her in Central Park to devour in kisses.

In my fictional world, it is never too late for love, and there are never any hearts too small to contain the passions of others.

In my world, there's no fear.

Back to writing, "The Bridesmaid" ...see you when I hit, "The End." :)

I have a problem with failure. With other people's failures and most especially with my own.
I don't like them.

So I felt that it would be theraputic for me to say this outloud:
I FAILED AT SOMETHING.

There. I said it. Though I have been alternating between meaning to take down my paltry word count of three or four thousand out of 50,000 words on the nanowrimo page and pretend I never did it, or telling myself insane lies like I can write 50,000 words in 15 days.. yes, I could, if I had nothing else to do. Or if terrorists were holding my family hostage unless I wrote 50,000 words in 15 days sure.

But the fact is, I took on nanowrimo as a lark this year without setting any solid intentions, I thought because I've successfully done it twice before I could dash it off in my spare time, and then I ignored it for the first week and then two... and I'm good, but not quite that good.

The problem is, I'm terrible at failing anything I start. Once I say I'm going to do something I'll go to insane lengths to actually finish it. Like last time because rather than fail, I stayed up almost all night and wrote 12,000 words the last day.
I can't quite adequately explain, and maybe I don't have to. Maybe all I have to say is: I failed at this, I did not succeed. I thought I could do this and it was too much work and I was too lazy.

It's kind of freeing.

So it's been what, a week? since the Stupak ammendment was added to the House health care bill effectively denying the right to practically seek an abortion to poor and low income women.
I was furious that this made it into the debate, that things like this could be tacked on at the 11th hour, and especially furious that it was the result of the American "Council of Bishops" of the Catholic church that was the source of this wonderful idea.

The abortion debate really pisses me off. Not because I think abortions are fine and dandy and I go get one every other Saturday. I'd have to think really long and hard about getting one, and at this age and ability to care for a child, I would probably not do it. But the debate doesn't even discuss the cause, merely the symptoms. It's like trying to cure tuberculosis by outlawing coughing!

We should be dealing with the reasons people seek abortions. Why are all these young, uneducated, poor, overwhelmingly black and hispanic women getting themselves into this terrible place where they need to seek an abortion? The culture of poverty in this country is awful. The lack of education and responsibility doesn't need to be there. We don't need to have uneducated poor. We don't need to have illiteracy and we don't need to have unwanted children. And banning abortion won't solve any of this.

Plus, I don't believe that a cluster of cells smaller than a grain of rice consitutes a human being. I realize that many people believe that because their religion tells them. But last I looked I live in a free country where church and state are separate, and though we may disagree, we cannot use the argument to authority of religion as an argument, and call it a valid argument.

Clearly I'm riled up about this, but the bottom line is, I'm a pragmatist. With no other changes, women WILL continue to seek abortions. Period. If this passes, they will seek unsafe abortions and that's just horrific.

I just signed this petition. For every signature on this petition, CREDO is sending a coathanger to every "pro-choice" democrat who voted for this bill. Want to sign it too?

CREDO petition