Well, I kinda fell down on the job for NaBloPoMo, but I’m rockin’ n rollin’ with my annual noveling efforts for NaNoWriMo during the month of November.

After an agonizing month of worrying about the fact that I wasn’t excited about it this year, and that despite NaNo founding father’s advice to “not worry if you don’t have an idea; just write”, I was devastated by the wasteland of my personal creative landscape. It appeared barren beyond any desert and as far as the eye could see. The closer November first came, the more worried I got. My thoughts continually returned to last year’s NaNo Novel… 51K words of a projected 150K word novel that I hadn’t touched all year. Every character, scenario, story line or idea I had seemed to circle back and be a part of the unfinished ‘08 Novel.

I came to a decision. Despite the suggestion to start and complete a 50K novel with a complete story arc for NaNoWriMo, this is my time to write! This month and the daily word count goals and the permission I give myself to be self absorbed and totally immersed in writing seem to be the only way for me to maintain the self discipline to actually pound out a story.
Imagine my surprise when I dropped in to the NaNoWriMo site forums to discover that I was in good company with other rule breakers. I am an official Nano Rebel, (as attetested to by the badge). Hee hee!

When I wrote last year I was only about 20k in when I realized that it would be impossible to complete my story arc in 50k words at the rate I was going. My story was going to need a lot more words than that. So I began summarizing the story here and there, and writing scenes as they sort of needed to be written. I’d find myself slipping from summary to dialogue and prose and then back to summary. Writing this way got me to 51K, a NaNoWriMo “winner” by Nov. 31. I had a complete story arc, albeit one with a lot of HUGE holes!
This year it’s all about filling in those holes to the tune of the monthly goal of 50 thousand words, which breaks down to 1667 words per day. I started writing a bit late, between my cleavered typing finger (a story for another day- and no; you don’t want pictures!!) and the necessity of going through the manuscript and identifying the holes. I went to sleep this morning sometime after 3 AM having knocked out 3,048 brand new words, which is about 5k short of being on schedule, but I’m back to it today and tonight, and hoping to catch up in the next couple of days.

If any of you lovely bloggy peeps write novels or screenplays, you absolutely must get Scrivener, by Literature and Latte. It is the most phenominal writing program I have ever used, and it’s making it soooo simple for me to keep a word count of this year’s writing separate from the entire manuscript form last year. It has super cool meta data, you can make notes and links and stick index cards on a corkboard on a spilt screen, color coded labels and, and, and… it just rawks! Check it out!!

Okay. I gotta go. I’ve just spent over 500 words, and I don’t know if there exists a finite amount of them in me each day or not. Lawl! Wooo hooo!

Peace, out!

* Peggy, please email me again. I lost your addy in comp switching and many of my passwords aren’t set yet, either so I can’t comment at Utah Savage

A few days ago we were chatting and she told me about this breakfast she makes. She called it Jalapeno Pie. (Well, actually she said something like “Halapeenya Pah” in that Texas twang of hers.) When she went on to tell me how she makes it, my mouth was watering. I won’t give you her recipe, (you’ll have to head over to This Eclectic Life and ask her for it), but it sounded to me like a quiche without the crust. I love quiche! And I used to make it pretty regularly. It’s just yummy no matter what you toss in as long as you have a little cream and plenty of cheese. Thinking about that Halapeenya pah of Shelly’s had me haunted by the idea of making a green chile quiche and finally yesterday I couldn’t stand it aother second! Back in the day, I would have made my own pie crust (I make a seriously mean and flakey crust), but with my hands acting up the way they have been I had to settle for a Marie Calander’s ready to fill n bake crust. Let me just say that it’s a pretty damn decent crust.

The bad news is that a mouse has gotten into my new oven!! There will be no cooking in that thing until the mouse is dead and it’s had a serious disinfecting! Grrr… So I had to use my little convection oven and it has hot spots that are unavoidable, so the top got a lil too brown.

The good news is that it was delish anyway.

And the recipe?? Okay, okay…

Green Chile Quiche

Pretty simple. Beat the eggs and the creams together and season.

I put a layer of cheeses (mozarella on the bottom) before piling in the chiles to preserve the texture of the bottom of the crust, then pile the rest of the cheese on. Pour on the eggs, filling the pie crusts. Don’t slop on the crust… it will burn there.

Preheat oven to 425 (I shoulda told you that earlier; it’s be hot by now! Hahaha!). Bake for 15 minutes then lower temp to 325 and bake another 25 minutes or so until it doesn’t slosh in the middle. Let rest 10 minutes and scarf! Yum!

Peace, out!

“One can imagine the government’s problem. This is all pretty magical stuff to them. If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch coven, I’d probably seize everything in sight. How would I tell the ordinary household brooms from the getaway vehicles?”
~Unknown (by me)