When I was in college, and had been studying French for about ten years, I needed a break.  I was bored and tired and getting kind of cranky with it, so I took German for a year.  Boy was that interesting!  I learned a lot – like German is hard and well, uber-foreign after so many years of French.  My mouth struggled to make umlauts and not caress words.   I also learned that my brain, like a library, has a distinct foreign language section.  When I couldn’t remember a vocabulary word or phrase in German, my electrical impulses went zooming to French, found what it was looking for and out it came from my mouth.  It was both funny and strange.  “Guten tag Herr Zimmer, je m’appelle Colleen.”

The greatest bit that I learned, however, is that a pause (German word for break) is a marvelous thing, for when I returned to French after my year of German, it was with renewed interest and vigor.  I even decided to become a French teacher!  Though I never found a job, but that is another story, isn’t it?

Like German, I started this blog as a pause from Polite Society.  I had finished my rough draft and felt like I needed to keep up the momentum while I let it rest.  Well, now that I have started my second novel, I feel like an old pick-up on a cold morning.  I turn over, then wheeze and sputter before pumping that gas pedal to keep me from dying.  I know that if I just let the engine warm up a little, I’ll be good as gold.  But, in order to do so, I need to focus on this one task, rather than divide my time, which I must admit, I’ve been doing rather poorly.  Neither the blog nor the book is up to snuff at the moment.

So, in this somewhat cryptic fashion, I am letting you know that I am taking a much needed pause from the blog.  I need to focus on my novel, get her humming to life.  Thanks so much for reading and commenting these past months, and check back from time to time.  This won’t be the last you hear from me!

My very first serious crush was on Steve White.  He was skinny (just like I like ’em), with a nice smile and sparkly eyes that wrinkled at the corners when he laughed.  Gosh, I wonder where he is and what he’s doing.  I remember that he was good at math and not asking me to be his girlfriend, so I would imagine that added up to some sort of success because I was rather tenacious, and I’m pretty sure he got good grades.  I liked him for a long time, seriously, like five years starting in seventh grade, bless his heart.  Steve, if you’re out there, I wish you well, and sorry if I was a bit much at times.  I was young, and, well, I think I can blame it entirely on youth.  Yes, I can.

In high school, he drove a Camaro similar to yesterday’s post (though it might have been a Z28, not a SS) – orange with black stripes.  It was a grand car – black interior, a nice rumble, hefty doors that made a pleasant sound when you closed them, the works.  It even started without a key in the ignition, which led us to believe that previous owners were some sort of thieves that always wanted a quick getaway.

I remember him driving fast, and the accompanying feeling of exhilaration rising in my belly.  I remember, too, him saying, and me learning for the first time, “You know, it’s possible to go faster than what it says, given the right conditions.”  The thought had never occurred to me.  Those numbers weren’t the absolute LIMIT?  Something could happen beyond them?  Mind boggling.

You’re probably wondering where I am going with all of this.  To cut to the chase (in a 1969 Camaro!), I am participating, along with my friend Kelli, in the National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo).  For the month of November, it is my goal to crank out the first 50,000 words of my second novel: The Sometimes Sordid History of My Penmanship. This really is like cruising in Steve’s cool car.  My belly’s gonna flip-flop for certain.  To give you an idea, yesterday’s post was 503 words.  I’m going to need 100 times that in thirty days.

As a writer, and according to the guidelines, I am starting only with a rough outline, a few locations, the names of the four main characters (Lionel, Cassandra, Joanna, and Calvin),  a 1966 Volvo P1800, and a 1954 Chevy 3100 pick-up (If you haven’t figured it out already, I’ve got a thing for cars). The rest, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, is up to me and the hand of God, as 1667 words per day, every single single day for thirty, is no small feat.  When I wrote Polite Society (80,645 words), I took well over a year, often going for weeks without touching the keyboard.  My best day, if I recall correctly, amounted to 2300 words.

Talk about a wiz-bang!  Additionally, aside from updates on my word count, I don’t know what it will look like around here.  I might, as Steve said, go beyond the limit of my speedometer and have time to spare for blogging and who knows what else (Square dancing?!  Fencing?!).  On the other hand, I may go out of my mind and never blog again from the shock of it all.  In any case, say a little prayer, send me good thoughts, whatever you feel comfortable with.  I’d appreciate it!

p.s.  Just to get me into the zone – that up there is 579 words.