And How Are You Coming With Your NaNoWriMo Prep?

This has something to do with writing

For many years, my family took part in a forestry management program conducted by the state of Connecticut. Every fall, we would cut and remove two to four cords of wood in a designated state forest area. We had four weeks to do this, which, for us, meant four weekends. It was a little intense. To prepare for the festivities, the week before we got started I'd make a big pot of spaghetti sauce for us to eat over the days we were working. Because in my family, that's the way we roll. We want to make sure we're going to be able to eat. 

Bread, cookie dough, and pear cobbler

This year, getting ready for National Novel Writing Month was no different.

 

 

 

 

What I've Been Doing These Last Few Weekends

Yes, I've been working on developing chapter blueprints, so that when I sit down to write next month I will, presumably, be able to write fast because I'll know what I'm going to write. But on weekends I've been loading the freezers with an array of things, just as I used to load them with spaghetti sauce for woodcutting.

Pasta bake and vegetable beef soup

It wasn't something I planned to do. At some point, maybe when I made those three loaves of honey wheat bread you see above, I realized I was doing it and ran with it.

It's not as if you didn't know I get a bit obsessive about cooking on weekends. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm Going To Argue That This Isn't A Bad Idea

 

Carrot soup, tortellini soup

Look, that wood cutting experience I told you about was the perfect training for National Novel Writing Month. It was a lot of work that had to be done in a limited amount of time. And we didn't even have the full amount of time to do it, since we were limited to working weekends. It was a ridiculous amount of work to be doing with that restriction. What if it rained, you ask? We went out in the rain! What if someone got sick? No one dared!

More cookie dough, pear crisp, more soup

The main thing I learned from cutting wood in that way is that if you're going to work like that, that's all you can do. You have to do everything else some other time.

Yes, NaNoWriMo Is Like Cutting Wood

Frozen biscuit dough...for the soup

I'm doing NaNoWriMo very much like I cut wood in that I don't have the full amount of time to work. I'll be off on family business at least two week days most weeks. I'll be off to a NESCBWI program one Saturday and to visit family another. I expect guests from two different states over Thanksgiving weekend. If I'm going to work like that, I have to try to make sure that that's all I do, just as cutting wood was all I did when I actually did it.

And that, my lads and lasses, is my excuse for having gone off the rails cooking these last few weeks.

Today I'm taking part in the Weekend Cooking Meme at Beth Fish Reads.