It's a start

I've got a short story submitted to an online publication, awaiting review and voting (which should be happening sometime mid-month), and I've signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. So far, I have a tentative title, a rough outline, some basic character sketches, and more dialogue than I know what to do with. I'm incredibly excited to begin this process. I just want to see if I can do it - focus, buckle down and commit myself to such a large-scale attempt. If I can make it to 50,000 words, I can handle a short story, so I'll see how I do once everything shakes out.

The 2010 National Book Awards nominees have been published, and Paolo Bacigalupi is nominated in the "Young People's Literature" category for Shipbreaker. I haven't read it yet, but I have read The Windup Girl (which is not at all YA), and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I have two copies of that book, because I bought it once through Amazon and put it away, intending to save it for my road trip over the summer, then somehow forgot that I'd already purchased it and bought another copy from Borders right before my vacation. I didn't figure it out until after I got back and was reshelving the copy that I'd read on the road. So now I have an extra copy that eventually I'll find a good home for!

Filming of Tolkien's The Hobbit is back on. AGAIN. With Peter Jackson at the helm. It will - unfortunately - probably be in 3D, but will be a two-parter (anyone who has ever read it realizes that this is necessary to tell the story properly) and a tentative release in 2012. (Um, if the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse hasn't brought about world-ending doom, obviously...) There's talk of David Tennant playing Bilbo. To which I say: "AW HELL NO!". This is many levels terrible because he's entirely too tall and gangly. Hobbits are not lithe or long of limb, they're compact and sturdy, and sometimes prone to corpulence. This is because they live in their somewhat burrow-like Hobbit homes in the Shire, and are farmers. Plus, hello: second breakfast and elevensies, anyone? And I won't even address the excesses of drink. Tall just will not do. I know he can get the speech patterns and of course he can act, but he just doesn't have the right look. And I consider the casting of Hobbits to be serious business, so PJ had better damn well get this right!

Aside from a lot of time being spent online browsing forums and tweaking story elements, I've got a busy two weeks coming up, with plans both weekends. This weekend is a get together with my husband's family. Thankfully, we're just doing the hosting part - the food is being covered by others. I still need to finish a couple of things around the house before then (mainly painting), but we're at a point right now where if these things don't get done, then...*sigh*. Next weekend I get to go to a Rifftrax event with my fabulous BFF. This is very exciting! Then there's Halloween to look forward to! (Although it will be on a Sunday, and we may not get many 'treaters.)

Pet Peeve of the Day: "Official" email notifications of traffic issues that will result from former President Clinton being on campus tomorrow sent out from our PR department, which someone has not bothered to make sure there is uniform font in the formatting, so it is obvious that the entire middle section of the message was just copied and pasted from something else. Laaaaazy...