Ready... Set... Write!

Ah, yes, NaNoWriMo is hours away. Am I ready? Of course not.

So, my blogging buddies, the point of this little post is to tell you that I'm going to be neglecting you all for the next 30 days. :( I'm still posting here (thank goodness for the Blogger post-scheduling feature!), but I won't have time to read all your brilliant blogs and comment, as much as I'd like to.

I'll see you in December. Try not to do anything interesting while I'm gone.

NaBloWriMo

I have already mentioned that I'm participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time ever this year (starting tomorrow-- yikes!). I had intended to participate in NaBloWriMo as well, thinking that it was also in November.

It is not.

So, it's too late for me to sign up for NaBloWriMo now, since it's over and all, but hey, look! I've managed a blog post every day in October, anyway! Excellent.

I participated unofficially last year in NaBloWriMo, or so I had thought, by blogging every day in November. And the year before that. And now, after two hit years in a row, I find out I got the wrong month. Nice. So, I've participated unofficially this year, too, and managed to hit the intended target this time.

And I'd like to know what else we have a Na------Mo for.

Megan's Guest Post

Today's post is brought to you by the winner of my 700th post giveaway, Megan Bickel. We already heard from Megan on Thursday & got to know some random things about her, and today she shares another piece of herself with us. Megan is a picture book author and blogs at The Write-At-Home-Mom, which you should certainly go check out after you finish reading her post here.

Meet the Penciler of Songs

As part of my 700th post giveaway, the winner and the runner-up both agreed to an interview similar to the one employed by James Lipton at the end of Inside the Actors Studio.



The Penciler of Songs, who I also refer to as the Songstress, is a long-time friend from Lubbock. I'm so glad she took part in this interview, because it was fun for me to read her answers to the questions, and I hope it will bring happiness to you, too. As a bonus, the Penciler of Songs is about to be published; a song she wrote will be in the upcoming edition of The Paperless Hymnal. (That's right; "Penciler of Songs" is a description, not just a clever nickname!)

Meet Megan

As part of my 700th post giveaway, the winner and the runner-up both agreed to an interview similar to the one employed by James Lipton at the end of Inside the Actors Studio.

I learned how to make a screenshot
just for this post!

Megan Bickel, the winner (whose guest post is coming on Saturday, by the way; stay tuned!) is writer of The Write-At-Home-Mom and my fellow Hoosier. :) I've only "met" Megan on the internet, but I am so glad that I did, because her blog is such a delight to read! Her interview brought me all kinds of smiles, and I hope it will do the same for you:

Mrs. Malaprop

You may not know this about me, but I'm a regular Mrs. Malaprop.

Actually, I'm not. I didn't really know what a "Mrs. Malaprop" is until I Googled it a moment ago, and found out that I've been using the expression incorrectly for a while. What I mean to say is, I'm really bad at pronouncing a word the first hundred times I see it, but I don't think there is an amusing literary character for that. Perhaps I'll write one.

A Potential Christian Novelist?

When last we met, dear readers, I was lamenting the state of Christian literature and how most of it that I have run across is complete rubbish. Alas.

So today I shall discuss: What I do about it.

Christian Literature

When I was in high school, I would pick up the odd Christian fiction book, read for a while, decide I didn't like it, and put it back down again. And then go around feeling guilty for not liking a Christian book.

After all, I liked Christian music, Christian t-shirts, Christian posters... but the favourite thing in my life, reading, didn't have anything Christian that I liked to plug into it. For years, I wondered what was wrong with me. And I have finally found the problem:

It wasn't me; it was the books.

Post # 700!

It all began here at Cheekyness back on October 1, 2004. Here is my first-ever paragraph, reprinted for your reading enjoyment:

Wow, this is exciting... I finally have my very own weblog. All I need now is broadband internet, a PDA, a cell phone (perhaps even one with pictures), a laptop, and one of those memory-stick things that everyone is using instead of floppy disks now, and I'll be right up-to-date with the rest of the country. :) 

I'm happy to report that I have all those things now, except for the PDA. But darned if the rest of the country didn't go and change the "up-to-date" standards on me in the meantime. I guess I'll carry on as best as I can. Again.

Oooh! Blog Awards!

So, it happens that this week, some of my new blogging buddies that I've met through the Crusader Challenge have given me some pretty pretty awards.

So, from Marieke and Erica and Christy:

I'm awarding this one to:
Lesley @ Chad and Lesley's Adventures
Denyce @ Denyce's Posterous
Carolyn @ 4 the Love of Boys
Heather @ Swallowed Up
Andrea @ In White Fields

From Clarissa:

This one goes to:
Paige @ I'm on BASE!!
Timbra @ McWiist Family
Jenni @ Talking Hairdryer
Olivia @ The Nelsons

And, from Faith:

And I'm passing this one on to:
Ashley @ The Pittman Family
Amy @ Ellyson Four
Shannel @ The James Family

While I do know men who blog and do a good job of it, these are pretty girly awards. So, I'm only giving them to women. Since all my writing-blog friends have pretty well passed these around between themselves for the past couple of weeks, I'm going a different direction with this blogroll. Also, there were some sort of rules that went with these awards; you will note that I have ignored those rules, except for the part about spreading the joy abroad.

So, go give these ladies a spike in their page hits today! (I hope they tidied up their blogs for the company that is coming over.)

Wanna win the first-ever giveaway on Cheekyness? That's right, to celebrate my upcoming 700th post, I'm having a giveaway! Comment, follow or link to my blog to enter the drawing. Contest ends at 9 PM (CDT) TODAY!

Litocide

Terry Pratchett expresses so well how I feel about academia messing with things that I like to read:

"Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book... She listened with half an ear to what the rest of the class was doing. It was a poem about daffodils. Apparently the poet had liked them very much. Susan was quite stoical about this. People could like daffodils if they wanted to. They just should not, in Susan's very definite and precise opinion, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so."

I agree with Susan. (I'm fairly certain that Pratchett did not have me in mind, but if he did, I'd like some royalties.) Mostly agree, anyway; I'm happy for people to take up as much space as they'd like to write about daffodils or indeed any other subject, so long as I am not required to read it.

Well, This Is Depressing

I'm reading In Retrospect, by Robert McNamara, for my rhetoric class. And it's depressing.

This is not a book review: I still have to write a paper over this thing, so I'm not interested in reviewing it. But here's a quick synopsis: McNamara was the Secretary of Defense for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and was a big part of the decision-making process leading to the Vietnam war. Of course, the whole big mess was already in process when Kennedy took office, and it just went downhill from there for a variety of reasons.

Running on Town Lake

Well, running by Town Lake. Running on Town Lake would require a fishing boat, a storm, and Jesus in the flesh to extract me from the water after I tripped over a passing wave.

So, running the trail around Town Lake has been on my "to-do" list since we moved here. But until better motivation arrived in the form of Sarah being in town for the weekend and wanting to get a run in, I didn't manage it. We got up early enough to get downtown before dawn, managed to figure out the way there between the two of us, and started out.

Texas Book Festival

Welcome to Cheekyness, too.

I think I've mentioned a few dozen times how much I love living in Austin, right? Well, I found another reason to love this city this past weekend: The Texas Book Festival.

This year was the festival's quinceañera, as one of the organisers put it, or 15th birthday, if you prefer. In 1996, the then-First Lady of Texas, Laura Bush, started the festival. She said that a columnist in the Austin Statesman noted before the inaugural event that there was a beer festival and a gun & knife show also happening in Austin that same weekend, and it was to be hoped that attendees at the Book Festival didn't turn up drunk and armed. (They did not, as far as anyone can tell.)

NaNoWriMo

I'm pretty sure that stands for "National Novel-Writing Month." And I, in a moment of madness, signed up. The crazy starts November 1st.

Because, between uni, blogging, and volunteer work, I didn't have enough ways to fill my time. Clearly, I needed to add something else to the stack. So, why not this, that I've always wanted to do anyway, right?

Coming up on a Milestone

By my count, unless something extraordinary happens, I'm a week away from 700 posts here at Cheekyness. (I already passed the 6-year mark on October 1, and the 30-follower mark a couple of weeks ago, so we'll include those in the celebration.) Yay! And while I frantically make up carefully craft the best possible post to celebrate this achievement, I want to also show my appreciation for you, my readers, by holding my very first Cheeky Giveway!

Airport Security

On our comings and goings to Lubbock last weekend, Chad was stopped for special screening. Twice.

In all our travelling in nearly nine years of marriage, I think Chad has maybe been subjected to extra screening once, ever. Me, on the other hand-- the TSA loves me.

Meet My Instructor

My favourite instructor this semester, by far, is my Rhetoric instructor. (Just as well, since it's my major.)

I knew she had a brilliant sense of humour before I entered her class, because her office is across the hall from my instructor's office from over the summer, and I used to read the stuff on her door while waiting. And that's when I decided that I wanted to be in her class, whatever it was.

Stephen King Gets it Right, Again

You know something funny? I've never read a single one of SK's novels. The only thing of his that I've read is On Writing, which is pure brilliance, and I'm just taking millions of strangers' word for it that he knows what he is talking about. (Of course, that one book by itself is enough to convince me that he does know what he is talking about.)

And Then They Were One.

 I have, seriously, no pictures of the bride & groom. None. Sheesh.

Chad with Goliath.

So, Sunday we were up bright and early (one of those, anyway) for breakfast with Phill & Keely. Sweet potato pancakes from the Slide Breakfast House... yum. Then we raced over to South Plains, where Chad (the good friend) promptly went to work getting things ready for the wedding while I (the bad friend) went to Family Builders like we never left in the first place. (There was some discussion about bringing a beach ball to bounce around the room for the occasion, but that did not pan out. Since the conversation was on Facebook, though, enough people read it to ask about it on Sunday morning.)