Oh, Happy Day!

I hope getting excited and starting to celebrate at the hearing of good news isn't like the groom seeing the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony. But I've been feeling like dancing a jig all week since I heard this news. And also like pretending that I hadn't heard it so that I wouldn't get too excited. Because it is still just a maybe.

A pretty solid probably. But still just a maybe.

And it is really ironic because it was just a week or so ago that I finally got around to putting that pic at the top of my side bar with the red circle and slash over a pile of books and the caption shaming Southern Oregon because the libraries are still closed and here the school year has started up again.

Then last weekend, there was this article in our local paper. They may have got it figured out and all fifteen branches may be open by sometime in November.

Running at half the hours with half the staff. But open.

Just in time for my birthday!

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I decided to go with this for my post tonight as I could knock it off quicker than I could prepare my Friday Snippet. Watch for my snippet--part 7 of Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes--sometime around noon Pacific Coast time.

I'm still not used to this new schedule my body seems to have settled into since I started getting well after that two week illness. Well, my body is apparently used to it But my expectations and ambitions haven't adjusted. I keep making plans that have to be put off because I tire out between eight and nine each evening where I was used to thinking of those hours between 9pm and 2am as my most productive of the day.

Not only have I been sleeping nights. But I've been sleeping one to two hours longer than I used to. And there hasn't been a single wake-a-thon of 20-36 hours--often my most productive times of all.

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Speaking of happy days. Today was the end of the first 70 Days of Sweat round. I just remembered that I still need to go check in.

I didn't make my goal in word count 60-70K. I think I'm somewhere between 40-50K, depending on what gets counted. But I still feel that I accomplished something way more important. I established an enduring habit because I spent quality time with my story world every single day since July 8 and unlike with NaNoWriMo the last three years, I have no anticipation of heaving a big sigh and setting it all aside for weeks or months.

I may ease up a bit but I can't imagine going even one full day without doing something related to it. I will probably get real focused on character sketches, outlines, notes, scene concepts, time lines etc. between now and the start of round two. I also need to decide which of the three or four stories that still qualify I want to dedicate to NaNoWriMo and get completely immersed in dreaming it by the last week of October.

It is going to be hard to tear myself away from the characters in Faye's story though. So I'm not going to. Any new material I add to Faye's story during November will count as sweat for Sven. Besides, since most of the POV characters of the other six or seven novels based in Faye's story world have at least a walk-on if not a serious supporting actor role in her story, any work on Faye's story is like priming the pump for any of the others.

See? How wrapped up I am in it? That's what the Sweating for Sven challenge did for me. Even if there wasn't going to be a second round I'm not about to abandon Faye and her world again just because the challenge ended. It has become its own reason for being a part of my days.