NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us...

So writing this even though I won't be posting it until at least tomorrow. I'm typing it on Sheeps. What's Sheeps? The ten-year-old Toshiba laptop running Windows XP that I borrowed from Emily; the tool I will be using to compose a novel throughout the month of November. Sheeps is an interesting machine: it has no battery, and must be run from a power cord. It has a 9 GB hard drive with just less than 3 gigs of free space. It's got Open Office, Windows Media Player, and my image editing program, and that's about it. Oh yes, and this darling little binary .exe that Em installed:

This is where Sheeps got its name. These little guys are roaming back and forth along my taskbar and along the tops of my windows. They're adorable, and I'm sure they're going to be a distraction, but a small one and also the only one: Sheeps doesn't get internet unless I plug it directly into our router downstairs. This makes it the ideal tool for National Novel Writing Month. It's really not much more than a glorified word processor, and that is exactly why I asked to borrow Sheeps in the first place.

Anyway. This is probably going to be my last blog until the end of November (not that I've had a lot to say recently anyway!), unless I really need a break from writing or something spectacular happens.

Anyone looking for my NaNo profile can click here. You can also keep up with my NaNoWriMo novel on Blogger. Just check out Our Eyes to the Stars.

An influx of natural and man-made disasters in the early 21st century sent the country into chaos. Nearly unanimous in their panic, the United States relinquished their Constitutional rights and fell gratefully under martial law... a set of temporary security measures that never lifted. Now, a century or more in the future, the Bill of Rights lies forgotten, and everyone is said to be exactly the same, no matter who you are or where you work--which is about the only important thing, because race has been all but forgotten due to pre-birth injections to mute pigment in your skin, and there's no such thing as a religion, except in outdated history books, which are even more outdated... when you think of the fact that there hasn't been a real, new, ink-and-paper book published in over sixty years.

Can you picture it? Can you see it? Good, that's important. Because these stories are to be a teacher, and a warning.

The future brings more trouble than you know.

With that said, I wish you all a wonderful month; and to all of you Wrimos out there, the very best of luck! I know we're all going to need it!