Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

First off, let me just take a moment to send my thoughts and well wishes to those affected by Hurricane Sandy. I live outside of Washington, DC in Maryland and we were very lucky here! We were one of the predictions of where it would hit but it missed us and instead wracked parts of New Jersey and New York. You are all in my thoughts!

I hope everyone had a great day and a fun, safe evening. I miss getting to see trick-or-treaters. We live in a small neighborhood so I never get to see the adorable costumes people come up with. We had an office party today at work where almost everyone dresses up so I got to see some creativity there. I just threw on some fairy wings I had and waved a wand around.

Halloween aka October 31st also means something equally important...it's...

NaNoWriMo Eve!

That's National Novel Writing Month (November) where you have 30 days to write 50,000 words. I did it last year and won! Which means I got to give myself a huge pat on the back. Last year I was unemployed and had oodles of time on my hands and this year I have a full-time job but I'm still going to give it a go! Thus, my creative juices in other departments may be deprived so you may not see me much this month. But I've still got a few things up my sleeve. We'll just see if I can get myself to post them...

Wish me luck!

P.S. - I'd love to have you as my writing buddy! Feel free to add me (dcleonard)

I'm a Winner!

I really can't believe it but I did it! I won NaNoWriMo! Okay, so all you get in winning is a printable 'certificate', a badge you can put on your website, and a little video from the staff yelling "CONGRATULATIONS!" which was really cute. I think I'm going to treat myself to a NaNoWriMo mug that I can sip coffee from.

It's kind of hard to accept that I really did this. People keep asking me how awesome it must feel to have a novel in my hands...my immediate response is that I don't have a novel. I just have a piece of one. I'm primarily a fantasy/young adult/historical fiction writer (with most of the emphasis on the first and sometimes they fit in the other two) so 50,000 is not a novel to me. I've "finished" a novel before (AKA I wrote a complete story...and then went back a few months later and changed everything so it is now unfinished again) and that one was more like 125,000 words. The story I wrote for this challenge was called "Lady of the Loch" and it takes place in Scotland. It was really hard for me to write as I hadn't developed a storyline much in my mind except for a few scenes but I knew I had to write it while Scotland was still fresh in my mind otherwise I might never have so, thank you, NaNoWriMo for helping me do it. I hope to try you again next year although I couldn't imagine doing it while working. Extreme props to those that do.

Now that I've finished, I hope to finally work on my blog layout again this weekend. I've been trying to come up with a cute image for Craft A Spell and I hope I've thought of a good one. The question is now whether I can draw it...and then whether I can draw it on my computer. I've done a little graphic designing before but never anything like this. Wish me luck!!

HAPPY DECEMBER!