I'm writing a novel...what's your excuse?

OK folks. It's November. Not only is it my birthday month (hooray! I'm still excited, and I'm closing in on 40. Check back in 4 years for an excitement level update...), it is the month of lunacy, of dreams and words and chest pains and writing averted...It is National Novel Writing Month! And, yes, I am participating. There. I've said it. Put it in writing. Have to do it now! Of course, I have given myself the caveat that if I don't reach 50,000, that's ok. I must write more than 150. Hey! I just did that!

Truly, while I neglected my poor, recovering from an unnamed virus son, left him in the less-than-capable hands of X-Box and Spongebob, I wrote 150 words. Of course, I stopped every few seconds to assure him, "Yes! I will cut you a piece of cake." "No. Two bites is not enough of an apple to have cake." "You knocked a guy's head off? That's great!" "Spongebob forgot how to make crabby patties? That's terrible!" "Yes. I will get your cake!"

As I sit gazing into my son's earnest hazel eyes, cake spatula that he just brought me planted firmly on the table in front of my computer, I wonder...Is it worth it? What will I gain from writing a novel in a month? Will my children need me? Just how many words can I hope to produce? How many episodes of Spongebob will my son watch? How many Go-Gurts can I let my one-year-old daughter wander around the house with? Can I really be as selfish as my college writing professor who threatened her children that only if there is blood, actual blood (or fire), are they to disturb her while she is writing?

Not sure. What follows are my 150 words. I'm quite proud of them. The baby just woke up from her nap and we're off to eat cake.

My First 150...

The birds woke me up again today. It’s not what you think, the chirp and twitter of robins and chickadees singing the sun up. It’s not the raucous cawing of crows three times the size of my black cat. It’s the smell. Every morning, windows up or windows down, I can smell the birds. I smell flight. Smell the dust and tiny pieces of down falling silently from beneath their wings as the tufted tit mice, and yes, the chickadees, rise to the feeder. Smell the fresh earth scent of sunflower seeds and oily blackness of thistle as the birds eat their breakfast, prepare for a day of flitting and flying, sailing alone and in pairs around my neighborhood and beyond. It is the beyond that wakes me. The strange and alluring scent of the unfamiliar, wafting from the birds’ wings that pulls me from my own dreams of flight.