Any of you who have still bothered to check the site over the past several months of my absence have probably wondered where I’ve been. Well, I’ll tell you.
On a whim, I joined a Uruguayan rugby team. You know- for shits and giggles. Well, wouldn’t you know that right on the eve of the first big match our plane goes down smack dab in the middle of the Andes mountains. A whole butt load of people died and those of us that survived did so by resorting to acts no human being should ever dream of, let alone perform. Oh, and it was freakin’ cold, too! But, I survived. Safe to say, I’ve quit rugby.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing…. Or it may be some book I read a while ago. Whatever.
Either way, I’m back. And it’s getting to be that time again. Time to gear up for my favorite holiday and for the biggest writing challenge I’ve taken on in my life thus far. No, not the Pulitzer Prize but NaNoWriMo! I live with the belief that if I did it last year I can do it again.
But, it’s only a month away and I’ve got a lot of warming up to do if I expect to be able to pump out well over 1,000 words a day! So, towards that end, I have selected a warm up challenge for myself to perform over the next month.
It starts with the aid of a favorite site of mine, Dictionary.com. Despite having gone to a good school with some of the most intelligent and well-read people I’ve ever met my vocabulary is still limited. So, in order to improve my vocabulary I signed up for Dictionary.com’s Word of Day in which they send me a random word and definition every single day.
Since it’s common knowledge that you have to actually USE a word in order to absorb it I plan to use each “Word of the Day” for the month of October. One word, everyday, for the next 31 days.
In order to give myself room to experiment and to warm up writing muscles which have atrophied from inactivity I will attempt to use more than just one sentence to house each word. I’ll do random blog entries about various observations or thoughts, try to throw some short stories in there, some non-fiction, some outrageous fiction, some holiday-based entries (it is October, after all) and maybe even a poem or two.
I promise nothing about quality or clarity, simply to use the word in a way that demonstrates my understanding of it. I’ve added a link on the side so you can check the definition and judge whether or not I’ve used it correctly.
Should I complete this task I should be in pretty good shape to start NaNoWriMo on November 1st and actually stand a chance at crossing the 50K word mark by the end of the month.
So, if you’re at all interested, stay tuned! You can be literary judges, hecklers, cheerleaders, whatever. I’ll happily read any comments you post (and promptly delete them if they are links to Japanese porn sites*_*).
Wish me luck, everybody!
