We're to that stage of pre-nano countdown where I'm not thinking in weeks any more, now I'm thinking in days. And I'm getting itchy to start writing. This is when I start plotting, and making notes for myself that I will utterly forget about long before Nano gets here. 

Today's particular waste of time...

Wordle is a fun way to look at something you've already written, and examine how you use language. Not that I have any clue what to make of that. 
Anyway, if you click on the picture up there it'll take you to the website, where you can do your own smash of word-art. This one is from Strange Travels, Book 1: Black Watch which was my NaNo novel for 2012. Book 2: White Dawn will be this years nano novel. Horray for picking up abandoned projects, right? 

<cue deranged laughter> It'll be fine. 

I'm breaking the cardinal rule here (and everywhere else this week) and I'm writing blog posts about writing. But I'm a little itchy about the run-up to nano, what with the inevitable hiccups in the site relaunch (HQ says sometime next week now) so I'm thinking a lot about what NaNoWriMo has meant to me, and what it's done to my journey as a writer. 

I can't tell you where my road with Nano started. I don't really remember where I first heard about it, or when I went to the website first. I know I created my login on Nov 4th, 2004. 

I was living in Minnesota then, and we had a really interesting group. I didn't get to go out and meet them that first year. I was a wet-behind the ears little thing that was still afraid of people. But they were wonderful and welcoming, and our ML (municipal liaison) at the time was perfectly encouraging.

I crashed like a static-prone airship. Maybe 15k words in, completely off in left field in a genre I'd never written in before, on like the 14th of November.

I'd been writing, seriously, for about a year. I had a book in me and I was determined to get it out. I made epic time-tables and plotted out everything that was supposed to happen and researched the spread of the Black Death and 14th century trading relations and anything else I thought fit. I talked endlessly, incessantly about my book. 

I'd been writing the first five chapters for about eight months. 

Now I can tell you all kinds of really wonderful things Nano has done for me. Not just about my writing, but the sudden influx of social life it's given me. Confidence in my writing and everything else. But, up there, is the thing that helped the most. See the thing everyone tells you about nano is that a large chunk of its brilliance is the fact you don't get time to second-guess yourself. You're writing so fast you just keep going. Don't like that scene? Tough, strike it through and keep moving. Forgot a character name? Caps-lock is your friend. 

NaNoWriMo gives you permission to be bad. Gives you permission to stop trying to invest every single word that shows up on your screen with purpose. If you've never done it, this is a perfect time to start.

And come back Friday, where I pretend to be quasi scientific. 

For those of you who don't know, National Novel Writing Month is a self-propelled novelling adventure that takes place every November. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel between the 1st and the 30th of November. You can check it out on the web here, and if you live in the Northern Virginia area you can find the rest of us here. 

Now they just need to find a way to make the scheduled posts button retroactively convince you that I posted this yesterday. You know, on Miscellaneous Monday, when it was relevant.

This is going to be a picture heavy week, I can feel it. 

So. It's October, and that means my obligatory Year of Creative Pursuits check-in. Last month was the general run; business-y things, and finishing a project, and editing Case of the Armadillo. How did I fare? Middling, if I'm being honest. I started a couple of knitting projects, I did the edits I needed to do for CotA, and I did a ridiculous level of editorial work for Wee Tales (which is available for purchase now, hint hint). I blogged. And blogged and blogged and blogged. I took part in Tamela's leg of the travelling writing prompt challenge. You can see our stories here.

And October goals are going to be a lot of the same. I just finished editing the first book in the Guardian's Circle series (Contemporary Paranormal? Is that thing?), Lost and Found and it goes to the intrepid editor this week, so I'm sure there will be things to do with that. I embarked on this probably ill advised reading challenge, and I have until the end of October to finish the book for it. I started this really nifty shawl for my mother for Christmas I'll need to work pretty hard on. 

So that's me, not counting the run up for Nano (come back Wednesday to hear more about that) and general fall good-times and all of that.

I was all excited about using the 'schedule post' function they just added to Weebly, and then I sat down and realized I was writing a Sci-Fi Friday post on Friday. 
Oh well. I'll delay it by a couple of hours and call it good. Just because I wanna see how the system works. It's a legitimate thing, shush it. 

They had an earthquake in my home state (Kansas) yesterday. Three of them technically. Magnitude 4.4 was the strongest, which seems small when you look at California and it's regular 6.something strength quakes. 

Now, if you're like most of the country you're blinking at your screen right now going "Earthquakes in Kansas. This is it. The End of Days has come" in whichever way you're prophesying the end (one-ist lies, or recitation of the book of Revelation, or sixty-seven pages of data about induced seismicity). But slow your roll a second. There's actually a giant fault line that runs through Missouri, not all that far from where I grew up. The New Madrid Seismic Zone is sort of like a Sword of Damocles just hanging out in the mid-west.  

I'm going to tell you a little story about the New Madrid fault-line I remember from college without actually looking it up, because I have an eerie feeling it's not true and then I'd have to caveat it more than this and just...nope. Consider it an American tall tale. 

In February of 1812 a Pony Express rider reported a very very strange day. He had a delivery for New Madrid Missouri, an emergency delivery that he rode all night to carry (I'm going to embellish and guess he was going from St Louis because that seems likely). He made it to the banks of the Little Prarie river sometime mid to late morning and became rather confused. He'd followed the road. He pulled out his map and checked, and he was at the bend of the river near the road. So where was the town? About then, he noticed that the river appeared to be flowing the wrong direction. 

Oh, and there was a church steeple sticking out of the ground.

Like I said, I don't know if that's true. It's a story, and it's the prairie and something insanely strange that happened a couple hundred years ago. Anyway, New Madrid had an earthquake of somewhere between a 7.2 magnitude and an 8.1 on February 7, 1812. I'm not sure I can accurately imagine what a 8.1 would feel like. It was severe enough it liquefied the sandy ground, and purportedly most of the buildings, or anything with any real weight to it, sunk. Let's just say I doubt a Pony Express rider's horse could have stayed on his feet through it.

Not to mention it was about the third or fourth in a string, the first of which reportedly rang church-bells as far away as Richmond VA. 

In 2008 FEMA studied the area, and informed the wider government that if New Madrid cracked off to it's full potential it would likely be the largest disaster in American history. Granted, an 8.1 is going to be bad. Sure. Now imagine an 8.1 in a clutch of states that have no earthquake preparedness plans. Where building codes don't factor in seismic activity, or they didn't in the 90's and even if they do now... There are hotels in Kansas City that are more than thirty stories tall I promise you are not rated for earthquakes. And a 4.whatever this week, they're fine I'm sure. How much stronger does that get before it becomes the sort of scene out of a Tuesday-Night cable movie?

In my checkered college past I was a geology major (for like five minutes, and never particularly seriously). One of my favorite things to do, when I was waiting in the geology building to explain to my adviser why I was failing Geology 101, was jump around on the floor in front of the seismograph, just to watch it pop up with new waves. My second favorite was dropping hydrochloric acid on things to watch them fizzle, but that's a story for another time. When I was failing at geology studies in a tiny program in Kansas nobody talked about studying the way mining could potentially be causing seismic activity. There weren't quietly-hipster discussions about how fracking was ruining the world and these big mining companies were going to kill us all. 

Maybe it's just my faulty memory, but I recall most of the upperclassmen in our program were taking jobs with the big mining companies. Now even the smallest programs seem to have caught up to the 'maybe we should study the planet more than new ways to mine it' way of thinking. It's amazing what a decade (or so) will do.

In an interesting note, New Madrid seems to be developing a bit of a 200 year pattern. So we've got that look forward too.

Edit: I finished this post and hit publish and then I thought about California, and the three day warning I told my husband that related to a giant split in the ground in Sonora Mexico(which turned out to be more of a case of underground water divergence and correlation than causation). I have an eerie feeling if there's a giant quake in Missouri next week I'll be eating this post. In my defense, I'm certainly not wishing, and I don't control the way tectonics works. 

Give me a second to get to the title, it doesn't mean what you think it does. 
I missed Monday this week, and nearly missed today too. I don't have anything coherent or clever to say today, so you're getting flash-fic, and probably not all that Well Written flash fic. It will also be without the accompanying picture, because it is a)inappropriate and b)of an actual person and that makes me feel vaguely creepy even if it is a publicity shot.
I'll explain the title after the fic, bear with me.

It's all Kate's fault. 
Well, any number of things are Kate's fault. The creepy doll in Jenna's closet. The hole in her entryway wall. The perpetual poisoning of her streaming video cue. Most of college, if either of them are being honest. 
This particular bit of Kate's fault is...
See, it started as something simple and fun. They both use the same pin-board program online, and when it starts letting you send people things...well. Jenna sent Kate something Kate would be interested in (a heard of starfish devouring a dead animal) and Kate sent Jenna a half-naked man sprawled over a car. And Jenna didn't mind that. It was a publicity still from a program she rather liked, and he was a decent looking guy (shush it) and it was a nice car. She maybe felt a little strange opening it in public, but despite the fact it was...racy, it wasn't actually bad. 
Jenna sent her back a baby octopus wearing a top-hat and let it go. 
But Kate is Kate, and she knows. So the next week there's another picture. Same actor, different still. He seems to consistently lose his shirt when he's around a camera. Jenna sends her back a picture of some vaguely creepy sea-creature.
It goes on like this for so long Jenna stops thinking of it as a thing. It's not every week. They're both busy--Kate is a research biologist this year (some people are too smart for their own good) and Jenna is steadily crawling her way up the ladder of tv-writers. It's not as glamorous as people assume. 
It's maybe a year after the random sending of pictures when she meets Kate's favorite subject. There's a really awkward three seconds where she has to strenuously remind herself that is not an appropriate opening anecdote when meeting someone you may have to work with someday (she's gotten on the writing board at a studio he's currently working with). She settles for an easy smile and a hand-shake. 
Kate has a glorious amount of fun, with the whole 'my best friend is actually working in Hollywood' thing over the next couple of years. Jenna doesn't mind. There was a point in their lives where she had a sort of glorious amount of fun with the details of Kate's life. It's why they're friends.
Men of Nature is when it becomes a problem. 
It's not the best show she's ever worked on. The lines are frequently ridiculous, and the actors are...well. They're actors. There's probably a reason writers have a low opinion of people who are paid to be pretty. And Jenna doesn't. Or she tries not to. It's one of those manly looking program that basically floats on the fact the main actors are stupidly attractive and have very little shame about crying on camera. 
It's a steady paycheck and while it may not be Shakespeare it's certainly not the worst thing on TV.
They're three seasons in when they shake everything up, replace half the show regulars(one of them with Kate's favorite subject) and tell the whole world they're taking it in a new direction. And maybe the new direction was her idea, and she's just been handed a head-writer credit on a silver platter...none of that was supposed to mean she had to do interviews with the actors. But she does them without complaint because the studio thinks it makes them look better to have a young woman on stage as their lead writer. 
If she sort of constantly sticks it to them because she's the only one that's nobodies business but hers. 
They're on a talk-show this time. Jenna, and the twelve-year-old who plays the damaged kid brother (alright, he's twenty, and she's only ten years older than he is, but he acts like an infant) named Micah, and Joe. His name's not actually Joe, but she calls him Joe in her head (which is also Kate's fault and she's not ever explaining that to anyone ever). The Green Room is nice, all stuffed couches and pretty lights. Micah sprawls like he's waiting for his adoring public to find him, clear across the other couch with one arm thrown over his head in careful disarray. 
Joe doesn't particularly like being on camera as himself, so he's pacing around the room like a caged lion. She gave up on trying to make him feel better ages ago. It didn't help, and she avoids talking to him when she can. He's nice, and professional, and she's got a crush the size of a Aussie football field (she's assuming that's bigger than an American one because it's Australian and...anyway). 
The three of them have fallen into a routine, where she and Joe ignore Micah just to twit him, and Joe paces, and Jenna dicks around on her tablet until it's time for them to go on. So when the program message pops up saying she's got a notification from Kate, she doesn't think before she taps it to bring it to the front. 
She's still calling that Kate's fault. 
Because Kate hasn't sent her the car picture in...probably six months. Lately it's been a string of weird internet comics about the Mantis Shrimp. So of course the one day she clicks on it without thinking her screen blinks for a second and then it's...Joe. Half naked, pants undone, sprawled out across the car from three shows ago. 
He chokes, and stumbles, and Jenna feels his hand land on the back of the couch, right next to her left shoulder.
She fumbles, and nearly drops her tablet before she can turn it off. "Shit. Sorry." She is going to kill Kate.
Micah is utterly uninterested in them. Or he's pretending anyway, for the moment she's going to take back every uncharitable thing she's ever said about him. This is embarrassing enough without witnesses. 
Made slightly worse when Joe drops onto the couch, a full cushion away from her--which is unusual for him, he's not good at personal boundaries generally--face the brightest red she's ever seen it when he wasn't pretending to be someone else. "So...Um..."
Jenna dropped her head forward. "My best friend has a really horrible sense of humor."
He quirked a smile at her. "That's not a normal thing, then?"
"No, it is." She flushed, and made herself look up. She worked with him, and this was going to be awkward enough all on it's own without her pretending it was a thing. Even if it was a thing, maybe just not... Jenna huffed out a breath. "But also she knew we were doing an interview together today."
"Well." He gave her an awkward smiled. "As long as she doesn't usually send you half-naked men."
"It's better if it's just you?" Jenna asked, before her brain thought through the question. "Oh my god just pretend I didn't ask that. That was a conversation killer line and we were supposed to go back to pretending that had never happened."
Joe laughed, like he couldn't help himself. "I think you've been writing too much TV. The scene breaks don't really happen in real life."
"They should." Jenna flushed. "It would make it much easier to work my way out of conversations."
"But if you got to edit think about all the fun things we'd miss." He smiled, secretive and sideways without actually looking at her. 
"Hey," the aide popped in the room then, looking around them, panting--they were always at a run, she remembered those days--and holding onto the door. "You guys are on next. It's time." 
Joe stood up and pushed a hand through his hair, settling in to be professional, while Micah bounded out of the room, excited to be on camera. 
"I feel like we should have to draw straws to see who goes last," Jenna muttered.
Joe cocked a brow at her.
"Well, I'd be all for slipping out the back, but if we let him on stage by himself he'll start trying to hump the microphone stand again." Jenna shrugged. "I don't dislike him that much."
He smiled, holding the door open for her. "Yeah. Have to keep him around, otherwise I'll wind up doing the car photo shoot."
She huffed, cheeks flushing. "I hate you."
"No you don't." 
"I'm trying."
He laughed. "So when do I get to meet this friend?"

So. I got somewhere near the end and couldn't figure out how to get myself out of it. Which is, I've decided, my writing super-power. 
I'm on the fence between telling you where this came from and not. Not sure which is better.
I suppose I have to now.
Kate really has more than once (probably more than three or four times) sent me that picture. And I've opened it in public more than once stupidly, once in front of my mother, which as a bit of the inspiration for this. The rest is just so much whole cloth, but it was fun for a minute. If you exist on the internets I'm sure you've seen the picture, and know who I'm talking about. 
The only person's name I used was Kate's. Because it's her fault. As things so often are. ;)