A long time ago, in a galaxy right here

Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it?

Much has gone on with Kiernan and his parents over the month and a half since my last post. I did not post in November as I began writing a novel at the beginning of that month. My sister-in-law JoAnne--who is a writer in San Francisco--threw down the gauntlet, challenging a few friends and relatives of hers to join her in an event known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, a project which takes place during the month of November. The challenge, basically, is to write a 50,000 word novel (or the first 50k words of a novel) in that month's time. I was leery of doing this, since my primary work as Toddler Wrangler gives new meaning to the phrase "full-time job", but I decided to take up the challenge anyway. In addition to JoAnne, my father-in-law Rance (a.k.a. Grance) had decided to do it. The thought of that poor man, with all of his responsibilities to the golf course, taking time away from the driving range to write a novel pretty much shamed me into it. Plus, I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to see if I could adapt my writing from a regimen of eight-hour days to a "nap-window" writing cycle...that is, writing as much as I could, as fast as I could, during naps--Kiernan's, not mine--and late at night.

The good news is that I found that I can indeed adapt to writing when Kiernan naps, or when both Kiernan and Wendy are asleep for the night. It is not as gratifying as writing full days, but when added to those full days I do get--Wendy is great about working these into our schedule--it works out. The bad news is I have not checked the words I've thrown down so far to find out if they are any good. So I have no idea. This is fine right now, as I'm still working on the novel, but once it's finished and I have a look at the actual work, I may start crying. And JoAnne may be in for some nasty phone calls.

The upshot of all this is that during the month of November, whenever I sat down at a computer it was almost solely for work on the novel. Nothing else got my attention during that month. Including The Creeping Kid (the blog, not the actual kid). This is understandable, perhaps, but hugely problematic since November held so many important moments in Kiernan's life. Most notably, his first birthday, but let us not forget the case of stomach flu that swept through our house like a plague. Ah...the pageant that is life.

So, as I post over the next few weeks, I will try to work in the events of November (and early December), as well as pictures from that time, in addition to covering the new and exciting works of Kiernan as his second Christmas approaches. Hopefully, in time, I will get caught up.

If not, well, at least I'll have a novel to show for it.