Last night I hit 10,000 words, marking my progress at 20%. Forcing myself to work on my novel daily is a challenge, but in one week in I am developing better writing habits. Therein lies the beauty of the exercise. Anyone who tells you they expect to have a publish-worthy novel in 30 days is either deluded or brilliant.
Although, we all know there is some truly awful writing in print. Not just plain terrible, but, as Dorothy Parker put it, “fancy-terrible…terrible with raisins in it.” Yet there they are, here am I. Maybe it is like finishing your dissertation, which is more than anything an act of persistence.
This month of literary abandon (as NaNoWriMo participants refer to November) is teaching me to become organized. I’ve cooked up a storm both last Sunday and today, knowing I can’t just come home after work and putter about the kitchen. Last week I made three different types of soup and a pizza. Today I made ginger marinated tofu and tempeh, a big bowl of Asian salad accompanied by a peanut dressing, and acorn squash and green peppers stuffed with two different types of brown rice/TVP mixtures. I’m eating much better now that I am planning my meals ahead, rather than allowing them to unfold based on what was situated at eye-level in the refrigerator. All serendipity is not equal, and in this sense I’m feeling a lot healthier.
The best thing to come out of the kitchen today is this: the toasted, sea-salted seeds from an acorn squash. It was a lot of work separating the seed from the innards, and there weren’t that many seeds in the end. However, once I washed
Toasted Acorn Squash Seeds with Sea Salt
them off, sprinkled them with sea salt, put them on a parchment lined pan for about 10-15 minutes at 375 (toward the top of the oven) the end product made me shout shazam! There are no words really, except shazam, for telling you how great these taste. Never again will those little babies go into the compost.
Hey! Vegan! 