With the NaNo fast approaching, I'm having trouble thinking of anything but that.  I'm trying to do the pre-event things so that when the day arrives I can do the average 1,666 words each day to make my goal of 50,000.  Fifty thousand, wow, doesn't that sound intimidating?

 

You are supposed to write the whole thing during the month of November.  I'm having trouble waiting until then.  My characters are talking up a storm and I want to write now!  It seems that all I can hear are their voices, saying little things that I need to catch on paper.  Have you ever tried to ignore the little voices in your head?  LOL!

 

I've got a Jane Doe who is speaking from the field she was found in.  I have two locales that seem to be involved.  I have a family who has problems of their own that are involved...or are they?  I have a retired homicide detective who just wants to get away from his demons and a local detective who seems to have too many bosses.  Add in your obligatory boyfriends, lovers, and amateur detectives, and you've got a story I'm having a hard time leaving alone.  Or should I say 'they' won't leave me alone.

 

You can't blame Jane Doe.  Poor girl is dead in a field and someone who knows her keeps denying her.  She's crying out for justice and she just may have someone on her side, but will he be able to identify the killer before the killer finds him?

 

 

About a week ago I was working on my computer when it crashed.  Not your simple fade to black type crash, but those one of those long, agonizing crashes that first closes programs and locks up causing you all kinds of heartburn.  After shutting down and restarting several times over a couple of days, it finally bit the dust.  Or so it seemed at the time.

 

I have bugged my ex on the phone trying to get help bringing it back to life.  He has patiently tried to get this computer dummy turned in the right direction and get me back up and running, hence off his phone.  The last he heard from me was that the chckdisk (sp?) had failed after three tries and that said hard drive was truly dead.  I doubt that he would admit it, but I swear I heard a sigh of relief.

 

I was lucky enough to have another hard drive on hand and had it up and running in a matter of minutes.  That old hard drive though had not seen the last of me though; I am very stubborn.  I just can't let something beat me, especially a machine!

 

All I want to say is never give up.  I tried one more time tonight.  I put the XP disk in the computer and started the machine up.  I didn't know if it would help or not.  It came up to the start of the install of XP!  I couldn't get that far before!  After talking to the ex, I decided I would click no, and let it reboot and see if it would come back up.  It did.  I let it chckdisk again and this time it worked!  I have my hard drive back...well for a little while anyway.  I'm not trusting it to stay up but I'm recovering my must-haves and putting them on the new hard drive.  I'm still in shock that it worked.

 

Stubbornness pays off sometimes.  I think I'll use it more often.

 

 

I've always wanted to write.  Ever since the first time I read a book about a girl with her own writing desk the thought of writing intrigued me.  The thought of creating my own stories and putting them down on paper has been like one of those dreams you have but never expect to accomplish.

 

I started writing several years ago with just a simple poem written for a friend's young grandson who was in the hospital.  It was just a little poem to make the scary hospital visit just a little less scary.  From there my friend suggested I try visiting a newsgroup that her aunt belonged to.  I've been there years now and they've encouraged my little fantasy of being a writer, mostly of poems and little stories.

 

Each year I've watched and listened as they've plowed through NaNoWriMo and wished I was up to such an undertaking.  Imagine, a month dedicated to writing 50,000 words on your way to writing a novel!  Now I have a hard time writing anything that would fill up two typed pages much less 50,000 words.  But somehow or another, I've managed to commit myself to doing this and before I could back out I signed up.  I honestly can't imagine what made me do this!  Insanity?  Glutton for punishment?

 

I just want to see if I have it in me to do this.  I have started many stories and never finished them.  For some of them it was the lack of time while I was working.  For others I think it was just not the right time to tackle the subject I'd chosen.  I think the most telling excuse was that I just didn't think I could do it and would look foolish if everyone else managed to get finished and I didn't.  Well, I probably have more time to write than anyone now and if I don't try, I'll never know, now will I?  Everyone is a writer until the words hit the paper.  Now I guess I'll find out for sure. 

 

 

Once more we have innocent lives being taken for unreal reasons.  This time it just seems to hit me harder than before.  This time it hit an Amish community.  The Amish have pretty much pulled away from the rest of us, which has made this even more heinous.  All they want to do is live in peace and the outside world intrudes with its violence.  It just proves that no one is safe in today's society.

 

What goes through a person's mind that makes all this right?  What reasoning do they use that makes it okay to take another person's life over some perceived wrong in the past?  And just what makes it okay to take a young, innocent child's life at any time?  There is no reason I know of that makes it right.  It must not have been a valid reason, even to himself, because he killed himself rather than face justice.

 

When are we going to do something?  This gun toting theory that we are entitled to have guns by constitutional right is bull.  Back when that was written, we were a new country just having won its independence after a long fight.  We did not have a large capable army, nor did we have an adequate police force capable of taking care of things.  We had not built up our government to withstand insurrection yet.  We are not that 1776 country!  We have aged, changed, and withstood that change.  We no longer have to fear being overthrown, except by the criminal element which thrives on its 'constitutional' rights.

 

I don't see anywhere in that constitutional right to bear arms that it says we have to have overwhelming firepower in our homes.  At the time this was written, it was speaking to the country's right to bear arms, not the individuals.  We, the country constituted of citizens, had a right to bear arms against those who would seek to overthrow us.  Self defense of this country, not as 'collector's of super-powered weapons' but as protectors of the country.  They had no knowledge of these new weapons with their multiple deaths per second capability.  I think that if they had known of them they would have written it differently.  But then again, they would probably be shocked at our inhumanity to our fellow citizens.

 

When are we going to do something?  When more innocents are taken?  After more weapons are in their hands?  When you become a victim?  When those you love perish because you didn't act?