This despite the nagging reality that, at mid-afternoon on November 1st, I have almost no idea what I’m going to write about. I’m pretty sure I’m going to start with a bartender. In a bar. And there likely won’t be anything to do with leaf mold*. Anyway.

Last week I was on a Greyhound for a few hours, and staring out the window I found myself thinking about how I might manage to write 50,000 words in a month, work, attend two weddings, throw our annual massive U.S. Thanksgiving dinner, read and discuss our book-club book, and eat. Where by “eat” I mean nourish myself by ingesting foods that aren’t sitting in the giant plastic cauldron leftover from last night.

A familiar thought bubbled up through the hum of the engine and my sidelined wondering about how a cool draft was managing to seep through the heating vent below the window: I’ve felt this way before. I bite off more than I can chew all the time, but the times it ends up being a very good thing are the times I do it in public, online. And, more specifically, when I most certainly don’t do it alone.

So.

There are two things I’m going to do all month, and in both cases I hope you’ll join in on the fun. Not only because I would very, very much appreciate your help, but also because I really do think it’ll be fun for all of us.

Thing the first: When I get stuck (and note that I don’t even have a plot yet, so), I will boil down that stickiness into one, concentrated question. I will ask this question of you. If it’s short enough or I’m desperate and don’t want to wait, I’ll ask it on Twitter. If it’s too long, I’ll pose it here on the blog. And at the end of the month, every person who’s chimed in with an answer via tweet or blog comment will get a shiny PDF of the novel I’ve written, whether I used their suggestion or not. (Note: The novel will almost certainly be crap. Participate at your own risk.)

Thing the second: Hugh over at Book Oven is doing a nifty thing with NaNoWriMo participants. He’s asking writers to upload their novels-in-progress to Book Oven so they can invite people to do bite-size edits as the novel progresses. (The nifty thing Book Oven does is allow members to perform edits on very small sections of text, so a writer doesn’t need to feel awkward about having lovely strangers read their whole project and a proofreader can get a lot done and not even realize it. Read more about Hugh’s Nano idea here.) Book Oven works in such a way that only members can perform bite-size edits and only people I’ve invited can work on my project. If you’d like to have a crack at my half-assed prose this month, leave a comment and I’ll invite you to the project. Everyone who performs bite-size edits will receive a shiny PDF of the (hopefully beautifully proofread by you and you and you) novel I’ll have written. (Note [again]: The novel will almost certainly be crap. But at least you’ll have gotten that impression yourself, one snippet at a time. Participate at your own risk.)

* Amy O’Neill Houck and I started sending each other random notes last week in an effort to spark some sort of inspiration in preparation for today. One such note she sent me was “leaf mold.” I spent a few days thinking about how mould on leaves could in some way tie in to an apocalypse of some sort (we know of my love of apocalyptic fiction, yes?), and then I looked it up and discovered that in fact leaf mold is something to do with composting. So what I’m sure of right now is that my novel will most certainly not be about leaf mold. On Book Oven, my project is called “Leaf Mold: This Novel Is Not About It“.

It seems like ages ago that I was invited to speak at the Whatcom Weavers Guild November meeting, and now the date is fast approaching. If you’re in the Bellingham, WA, area, come to the event! I’ll be talking crochet and will specifically be focusing on the rise of new generations of yarn crafters – something I think weavers can relate to. I won’t talk technical crochet at all (unless folks want me to), and I’m sure I’ll do lots of arm-waving and hope to do lots of question-answering. They’ll have copies of Crocheted Gifts on site, and I’ll be signing copies. Mostly, I’m excited to hang with yarn people for an evening – it’s been a long time!

St. James Presbyterian Church
910 14th Street
Bellingham, WA

If you’ve disabled commenting on your blog, I’m gonna go ahead and say you’re not a blogger.

I had a conversation with my friend Scott about it. And a bunch of people responded on Twitter. And I talked about it at work with Zak.

@meagangracie asked, “how would you classify @mimismartypants then?” And I replied, “As a writer.”

I mentioned Seth Godin, the master of profoundly stating the obvious*. He has a tremendous impact on conversation in the marketing and publishing worlds, but he’s pretty much inaccessible. How would I classify him? As a writer. (And as a speaker and a consultant and whatever.)

Blogging is about conversation, and not just the conversation a blogger might spark elsewhere. It’s about a conversation on that writer’s blog. Put another way (or perhaps a different way; I’m still working this out in my head): a blogger is a participant in conversation, whether it’s a conversation they start or simply join in on. Just starting it and walking away or watching silently from the sidelines is simply not participating.

What do you think?

* I say that without sarcasm. There’s a true talent in conveying such things to people, and he really, really has it.

Not generally comfortable making long-term plans, I started out 2009 – my hiatus year; you know, the one I’d use to figure out what I want to do next – with one goal: to end up working doing something fascinating, with good people and not for a big company I’d feel terrible leaving after a couple of years when the novelty and idealism would wear off.

I just sort of left it at that, brewing at the back of my mind while I tooled around learning how not to work. (It took me four months to learn how not to work.)

Occasionally I’d have a flash of clarity and realize I was on the right track. Mostly this happened after having a spectacular coffee date. I had a lot of coffee dates with a lot of interesting people. It’s people that lead to work, see. So in addition to having fun, I knew the more people I talked with, the more likely it would be that work would find me.

Then one day in August my friend Zak, who’d become a frequent coffee date, invited me to the office of his new startup to meet his business partner Martin and have a “tour” of their 8-square-foot office. The tour ended up being a mental one: they told me all about their big ideas. I left having essentially thrown myself at them. They were looking for some people to join the first team of volunteer contributors to LexPublica, their project to open source the law*. They thought maybe I’d be interested in being a non-lawyer word nerd to work with the lawyers and law students they’d already lined up to start drafting the first contracts.

The more I spoke with Zak and Martin, the more I thought their idea is brilliant, the more excited I became and the more I found myself trying to insert myself into some sort of everything. And then they asked me if I’d join them. Capital-J join.

I don’t have a title or anything yet, and I don’t much care. I’ll be doing lots of different kinds of things, as one might expect from the first employee at a wee startup. For now I’ll be blogging, tweeting, writing, hashing out lots of general brainstorming and I’m starting to get to know the first few people who will be working with us (see the * below).

And there you have it. Now I work full-time. Away from home every day for the first time in over eight years. Today’s the first day in two weeks I’ve managed to have a lunch packed. I’m learning.

* You’re familiar with open-source software, right (think of Firefox)? It’s often released for free. The code (the source code) is made available for anyone to examine or use. When we say we’re open-sourcing the law, what we mean is that we’re working to create a community of volunteer lawyers, non-lawyers and lay people to draft basic contracts people and businesses often feel they can’t afford to have drafted from scratch, and they’ll do the drafting in public so people can see the drafts progress. The contracts will be made available for free under a Creative Commons license. Our first contracts (which will hopefully be ready in the next few months) will cater to small businesses and creative professionals, so if you’d like more info follow our blog or Twitter. Or ask me any questions right here. I’m still learning, and your questions will help me learn faster.

I wish I had more time to write right now, but I’ve (gasp!) started a full-time job. More on that soon, but now I must get back to it.

The event was a huge success. Well over 200 people walked the short route in perfect weather. Of course, it wasn’t the walking that was the point. It was the community and the fundraising. How much fundraising? By the end of the morning Sunday, the event had raised over $41,000 (USD) for the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research. And we’re still accepting donations (hint).

My cousin Bonnie spoke before the walk began. She recently had a prophylactic pancreatectomy (translation: she had her pancreas removed before it was cancerous). After five years participating in the same study my dad’s a part of, doctors agreed her pancreas wasn’t looking good. She lives now as a diabetic; she looks and feels terrific.

One woman on the organizing committee had pancreatic cancer twenty-six years ago. She’s in great health, and she’s pretty awesome.

Still. The overwhelming majority of walkers were there because they’ve lost a loved one, a friend or a colleague. One woman, whose husband was recently diagnosed, asked my mom, “So many people are wearing cards in memory of someone, not in honour. Does anyone survive?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. The answer itself is easy; it’s just not easy to say.

At the end of the event, on a high from the successes, I ran into an old high-school acquaintance. There are few people from my adolescence I’d be happy to randomly bump into, but she’s one of them. She looks just like she did fifteen years ago. Except it’s her dad who was recently diagnosed. I wish I’d bumped into her at a bar so we just could’ve had a pint and caught up. Instead, we skipped the small talk and went right into the thick of it – radiation treatments and prognoses. Her dad is a journalist, and he’s writing a blog about his daily life.

I’m so proud of my family and the community they’re a part of in the hometown I so often deride. There’s much work left to do, but they call it the Walk of Hope for good reason. My own spirits are bolstered, and it just feels good to face my fears with action.

Thank you. Thank you all so very much for your support in words and donations. You’ll hear from me about this again next year.

[Link to WPA posters via Faythe Levine]

Zak and I chatted a lot that day at Northern Voice and we’ve met for coffee every so often since then. We have a lot of similar interests, and I was fascinated when he told me about his new project, LexPublica. Headed up by Zak and his business partner Martin, LexPublica is going to open source the law by providing community-produced, Creative-Commons-licensed contracts for any and all to use for free. It’s an ambitious and inspiring project, and without blinking I volunteered to help in any way I could—what better way to spend my not-working year than to contribute in some way to such a project?

I’ll be involved with LexPublica in several ways, many of which are still being hashed out. But one of the more significant things I’ll be working on is the style guide. As you well know, I’m a word nerd and a grammar geek, so I’m intensely excited about working on this aspect of the endeavour. People from all over the world will eventually be collaborating to produce contracts, so in addition to nitty-gritty grammar, style, and usage rules; citation guidelines; legal usage rules; and bigger-picture contract structure guides, we’ll be specifying preferences for terms and styles that are often influenced by region or dialect (like, “Do we call it soda or pop or Coke or a soft drink?” except, you know, with legal terms).

This kind of project isn’t as far a cry from my work in crafts as it might seem. One of the things I was most excited about when I started at Interweave Crochet was working on our style for writing crochet patterns. Also—and correct me if I’m wrong—I think many crafty and generally creative indie-business types could benefit greatly from some of the kinds of contracts LP will be producing in coming months and years—you know, the kinds of things that make you feel totally out of your depth because you can’t afford to hire a lawyer; documents like a website privacy policy, basic employment contracts, non-disclosure agreements, etc.

I’ll be tweeting and blogging a bit about the stuff we’re getting into, and I’ll generally be helping out in a bunch of ways. I’m excited to be working on such a big project, and one I think is so smart and has such exciting potential.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mind your language (guardian.co.uk)
• Acronyms: Better writing (billbennett.co.nz)

Let’s talk about health care. You know I’m happy with the care I receive here in British Columbia; I don’t think the system’s perfect, but I’ve had no major complaints about it, and it compares favorably against the care I got when I lived in the U.S. But I don’t want to talk about my personal experience.

I have a nagging knot in my gut that tightens the more I read about the state of “debate” on health-care reform south of the border. In an attempt to untie it, I’m confessing the following:

I think it’s wrong—capital-W, amoral Wrong—to deny society’s responsibility to take care of its members. It’s not an issue of whether you’ve pulled yourself up by your dead-horse bootstraps, it’s not an issue that’s in any way related to killing old people or the infirm, and it certainly shouldn’t be an issue that’s even remotely related to corporate interests.

Most countries of the developed world spend less per capita on health care than the U.S. does and provide coverage to all citizens. Decent coverage.

Given all these things, I don’t understand why people oppose universal health coverage so vehemently. Please tell me why.

(If necessary, I’ll moderate comments that don’t contribute to productive discussion. But I’m sure I won’t have to.)