Nice new project and other stuff

My "Nice" project started 12 days ago and has to be 50,000 words long by Christmas. Well obviously it doesn't have be, I mean they aren't going to come and cart me away to prison if its not but I would like it to be.
As of this morning it is 5,400 words long thanks to a 1,200 word spurt this morning, ably assisted by 2 cups of tea and a Wagon Wheel. Don't know what possessed me to buy the Wagon Wheels - don't even like them - but it has to take at least some credit for this mornings efforts.
On a different note, I woke up the other day to an email saying that I have had an article accepted. It's only short so the pay isn't great but it's something else for the resume and it's the first thing in a few months. Still not heard back from anyone regarding the fiction that I sent out a few weeks ago but a few weeks is a short time in this game.
Other than that there's not a lot happening in either the writing or the real world.
That Christmas thing will be upon us shortly. How come, when we were little Christmas never came around this quick? Does time travel faster the older you get?
Oh one of my old boss's (should that be "es"?) caused a stir the other week by ringing my new place of work and when he was told that I wasn't in left his name as Mr Such and Such and said that I would know who he was and why he had rung. Yeah, course I know who he is and he rang to see if there was any gossip. I was actually very touched because he was my boss about 5 years ago and we kept in touch but when I changed jobs we sort of lost it. I'd tried emailing/ringing him a couple of times but when I got no response thought we were just drifting apart as people do. But no, he tracked me down though God knows how thinking about it because I work in a very obscure location. Turns out his phone was nicked and of course he had no back up of his contacts and he had to change emails for some reason that I didn't quite understand. Anyway I was touched that he'd made the effort. He was always more like a little brother than a boss. When I was asked at work who he was I just said that he was an old boss and let them wonder about the rest. Gotta have a bit of mystique. Me and mystique there's a laugh.
Anyway, I can tell that I am starting to waffle - must be giddy from the success of 1,200 words down today so on that note I'm off to make Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup (gotta do something with it) and bake biscuits.
Ta ta

Just curious

Just wondered if anyone was signed up to NaNoWriMo this year? Or have you done it before? Or generally what your thoughts are about it?

In the water

So that's it, my toes are back in the water and I have sumitted my first piece of short non fiction since (I checked my records) 15th October 2010. It feels kind of new and exciting and a little bit strange. The piece that I submitted was something that I wrote before my "sabbatical" but I hope to start something new later today.

Guilty as charged

I believe that I am guilty of not following one of my own rules of engagement, namely the one about not messing about because it gets you no-where. Indeed I think that I have spent a lot of the last year "messing about" and not being terribly serious about what I was writing. I was, I think, pretending that I was trying to be a writer, going through the motions as it were. They say that confession is good for the soul - so there you go. I confess I am guilty as charged - it's a fair cop. but the good thing about realising what I have been doing means that I get a chance to do something about it. I know that I said a couple of weeks ago that I was thinking of writing short fiction again but as yet I have done nothing about it. But that changes this afternoon. I start getting serious again this afternoon. It is in fact already afternoon. It's not like I'm putting it off for a couple of hours.
On a different yet similar note. I had a conversation with the dog this morning about BTL. I explained to him about how I loved it and I thought that other people would too - if only they got the chance to read it. I also told him that in this current economic climate publishing houses were taking on fewer and fewer new writers because it involved quite a big risk with their somewhat limited financial resources. He was of course absolutely riveted by this conversation and was hanging onto my every word. So then I asked him for his opinion on self publishing which is something that I said that I would never do. I mean, people are supposed to pay you to publish your work. Anyway, he didn't really have an opinion and chose that moment to fall asleep. So I wondered what you all thought. Is it something that you have considered or even tried and what were your experiences? Is it something that I should consider?
Anyway, serious head going back on now.