It’s nearly that time of year again.
No, not National Zucchini Day, and it’s a little late to be celebrating Christmas in July.
It’s WCC’s August Writer’s Workshop, where the objective is to write a blog entry everyday for the month of August. After a seven-month hiatus– and a two-week stint in the middle of Yosemite– this may be one of the more difficult literary journeys I’ve taken. Yes, even more topsy-turvy than the publication snafu surrounding the high school newspaper column piece about people getting it on in the girls’ bathrooms in the E building. (But it did get published! Thank you Tinker v. Des Moines!)
A friend of mine did NaNoWriMo this past November and completely put me to shame. If she can write an entire novel in one month (brilliant!), then I can surely blog everyday for the better part of four weeks.
I’m trying to decide on how I should get four weeks in of straight blogging. Should I start a little early? Should I attempt to blog via carrier pigeon? Or should I totally cheat and just blog for half a month? 
Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Cheating isn’t an option! I’ll blog, I’ll do it! I’ll be the little train that could, or tried, at the very least.
Still, I’d like to think of this weekend of blogging as a pre-workshop interlude. I can completely justify my procrastination: this year, August 31 falls on a Monday. If I don’t jump ship and start swimming for shore until Monday, then everything will fall into place easier so I can…allow more time for drafting and revision, right? Oui? J’ai raison, n’est-ce pas???
I’ve come to a compromise. While I’m (let’s admit it) horrible at keeping time in the blogosphere, I never, ever fail to write (or think about writing! surely that counts–?) in my journal. In planes, trains, automobiles, Girl Scout camps and bathrooms, I’m constantly writing about something. When I’m not near my journal, I feel like I’m a deviled egg without paprika. Sometimes, I wish I could just write down everything and use it for material for the gigantic screenplay I’m writing about, well, life (sans Eddie Murphy and Martin Laurence), or something like it, in which I use an excessive amount of, well, commas, quotation marks, and “sarcasm”.
Okay, that was weak. I’m just warming up, so gimme a break. I’ve only started writing things fit for publication this past semester, and I’m really, really rusty. I’d better get better, quick. I’m planning on contributing to The SeeSaw, Palaver. I’m also helping start up an undergraduate research journal at USC, and I suspect that my excellent friend and I will be responsible for the initial editing, so… I need to quit slacking.
I know what you’re thinking. Dood, it’s still July. Calm. Yourself. Now. But, that’s the thing. I’m a typical American, maybe even an atypical California girl (I can’t surf, I don’t engage in surfer talk, and I don’t live all that close to a beach). Sometimes, I feel like relaxation is a state of mind that I only reach asleep in bed or when I’m dead (d’you you like the rhyme? do you?!?). Of course, this is horrible for my frazzled, frazzled nerves, and, hell, I’m not even twenty yet.
I should end here. The house is starting to warm up. We’re conserving energy by windows on the sides of the house at certain times of the day (passive cooling, anyone?), and it’s working quite well in these 100-degree dog days.
Speaking of ovens that aren’t really ovens, another link for your perusal: Car Cookies.
That’s my exit. Gotta run!
-l.l
