My 2014 NaNoWriMo experience

Hello!

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I took time off this November to focus on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month); about a year ago I had an idea for a book about an enchanted tarot deck. The idea had been knocking around my brain for a while, so after I sent out my first novel to beta readers in September, I figured, "Hey, why not? NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to see what I can make of that idea." So I went for it.

I spent most of October getting excited about the new book, and worked hard to restrain myself from plotting any of it out--while I'm a firm believer in seat-of-the-pantsing (the NaNoWriMo term for people who like to let the muse take them where it might without any pre-plotting), my self-doubt tends to creep in. What if the muse doesn't come this time, and I end up repeatedly writing "this is stupid, I am lame" to fill up my blank screen? But I held firm, and had faith in the process, and banished my self-doubter to the same realm where I lock up my self-editor during NaNoWriMo.


Armed with the bare bones of my idea, I started writing literally at 12:01 am on Nov. 1st after removing my Halloween make-up. I wrote a chunk, and then woke up the next morning and wrote another chunk. The words flew out with a will of their own; my fingers channeled some force beyond my understanding. Oh happy day! Huzzah! The writing muse is here!! Right?

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Until Day 4. I woke that morning to the 'realization' that everything I'd written was complete crap, and I was fooling myself to think I could ever be a writer. Nobody, I was convinced, had ever written such drivel since mankind had scratched out the first words onto the walls of caves.


But I held firm. I reminded myself that every writer has moments where they feel this way, and reminded myself that first drafts are never good. I told myself to just keep writing.


I decided to check out some of the virtual write-ins on the  NaNoWriMo YouTube channel to keep myself motivated; they archive their past write-ins and you can watch them anytime you need that push. So helpful! It's just as good as watching them live--they give you prompts and timed writing sprints, and even if you don't do the prompts (I didn't) it's an awesome way to get yourself focused and writing. And, there is silliness and joking to keep you in a good state of mind. I highly recommend checking them out anytime you feel you just can't get your writing mojo flowing.


I was so impressed with the write-ins that I decided to sit in on a live one, on 'double-up day'; this is a day where they encourage you to double your daily word count for the day, and your donation, if you are able. They had several virtual write-ins that day, and I sat in on as many as I could. It spurred me on to not only double my word count that day, but to triple it.


And with that, I was off and running. I finished my 50,000 words in 17 days, and had the rest of the month to get the novel up to my personal target of 60,000.


By November 30th, I had a mostly finished novel; I finally finished the draft completely yesterday, coming in at 68,900 words. Along the way I changed from third person to first person, wrote several scenes with characters and backstory that I had to completely revamp, changed names and job descriptions of characters so many times I thought I'd go crazy, and ended up with a fully-formed plot and a draft that I am mostly very proud of. I know it's going to need a lot of revision when it comes out of hibernation, but I have an excellent foundation to build from. And that can only be a good thing.


So here's what I re-learned about it all:

1) Self-doubt doesn't stop after the first novel. My brain likes to feed me fear, but now I know how to overcome it. Just put my head down and write anyway.


2) Persistence is everything. Keep writing. Think what you just wrote is crap? Worry about it later, when you have a clear head. Don't delete and start over, and don't quit. Just keep writing.


3) The muse WILL come. If you write, your  neurons will fire and your neural networks will begin churning out stuff, and ideas will come. If you have an idea and a plot to start with, great! But if you don't, that's okay. The act of writing itself gets you thinking, and your mind will kick in.


4) You should bust tushie to get ahead of your word count/goal, because you never know what's going to happen next week that will throw you off. Easier said than done, I know. But true nonetheless. Thank goodness I got as far as I did early on and by November 30, before my jury duty kicked in and derailed my 'I'll get it up to 65,000 words in December' goal!


So there you have it--and I hope your NaNoWriMo experience was just as amazing. :)


Keep writing, my friends!!

This is Halloween

Tonight--Halloween night--is one of the most beautiful nights of the year.

I'm not talking about the weather which, even here in California, is a gamble. I'm not talking about the decorations, although some would certainly argue for a type of beauty in a good spooky haunt.

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I'm talking about the social contract that says, on this one night of the year, children may knock on strangers' doors and expect to be given a warm welcome and a piece of candy. This will happen in countless streets in countless neighborhoods in all fifty states, and in many other countries beyond. It's a true miracle of human spirit and community togetherness otherwise unmatched throughout the year.


We adults stock up on candy, not knowing who will come, or even how many will come. Some even spend time and money to decorate our houses with fun lights or spooky scenes, to help give children we've never met a special evening filled with fun and harmless scares. It's not just parents who do this, it's all sorts of us: single, married, with children, without. Young and old. Wealthy and poor.

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And when that doorbell rings, it doesn't matter who's on the other side. They don't  have to practice the same religion we do. They don't have to be the same race. They don't have to belong to the same political party, or think the way we think. We will open our door and give a piece of candy to any child who asks for it.


Next Halloween, take a moment to look down your street. Watch the lights as the children dash back and forth across the street, run from house to house, squeal at scary decorations and yell 'trick or treat!'. Walk down to the corner and look down the next street; notice the same thing happening there. And on the next. And on the one past that, too.


Tonight, the streets, the neighborhoods, they belong to the children. Not the drug dealers, and not the criminals. Watchful parents and neighbors come together to create a playground for the children to experience and enjoy. Filled with magic and fun and candy.


I can't decide if it's ironic or fitting that the night we set aside to pay tribute to the things that scare us the most--death, phobias, insects, vampires, ghosts, the dark, things that go bump in the night--is also the night we come together to celebrate and support innocence.  Maybe this makes sense, to prioritize the young when remembering that our time on this earth is finite, and that the cycle of life is inevitable. I don't know.

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But what I do know is this. Millions of children will fall asleep tonight with their heads filled with fun memories and dreams of their candy loot. And millions of adults got their hearts tickled by adorable costumes, and had a reason to smile the night away.


And that, my friend, is a beautiful, beautiful thing. May we carry a bit of that Halloween spirit with us throughout the rest of the year.

Why I love NaNoWriMo, and believe you will, too!

Hello!

As some of you may already know, I'm stoked beyond words right now because one of my favorite things is about to happen: NaNoWriMo.

Before I say more about it, let me ask you this. Have you ever, even a little bit, said to yourself 'You know, I'd really love to write a book someday."? (Same question applies if you can answer 'yes' to 'screenplay', 'short story', 'memoir', etc.). Have you ever read a book and been really annoyed by it and thought 'I could write a better book than that, dammit!"?

If you have this dream lingering in the back of your mind, poking its little head out now and then, NaNoWriMo is the way to make it happen.

NaNoWriMo stands for 'National Novel Writing Month', and it happens every November. In a few days' time, around half a million people will gather together at the NaNoWriMo site (www.nanowrimo.org), and will endeavor to write a novel (50,000 words) in 30 days. A vast quantity of them have never written a novel before. And, btw, all the resources and tools and signing up, it's all free.


What's that you say? You think this is all crazy talk?? No sir. Well, maybe. But only in the most awesome, amazing, life-changing way.

Yep, I said it. Life-changing. Because it changed my life.

I'd always thought about writing a novel, ever since I was a little girl. I came close a couple of times, but always talked myself out of such silliness. Then, in 2010 I began one, inspired by my genealogical research. I wrote here and there, agonized over each paragraph trying to make it perfect, and got frustrated by how little progress I was making. I've been a writer of one sort or another all my life, and in my professional life have written journal articles, book chapters, and even a research-based non-fiction book. But this novel thing...well...it was different. And it was hard.

Then, in October 2012, a friend of mine mentioned something she called 'NaNo', and explained it to me. I figured, why not? It will kick me in the tushie, get me to really put a spotlight on pulling this novel together once and for all. Give me a reason to prioritize it. And worse come to worst, I just won't make the full word count, but I'll be farther along, and that can't be a bad thing.

So I sat down to write a little each night, once my daily obligations were done. I had a more-than-full-time job with a monster commute, and all the other typical daily responsibilities to go along with it. But I carved out a little time, and I really enjoyed seeing my word count go up--so much so that I started pushing aside my TV shows to write more.

That first year, I didn't 'win'--I didn't reach the 50,000 word goal. I came in just under 25,000 words.

And yet, my life was changed.

Why?

For a very simple reason: It gave me permission to turn off my 'internal editor' and just let myself write. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until later.

See, when I would sit down to write before NaNoWriMo, I'd get all caught up in my head. The sentence I was writing had to be perfect. The paragraph I was writing had to be perfect. This word here? The one I can't get quite right? I have to sit here and obsess over it I find the perfect word. This plot point here that could go one of two ways? What if I pick the wrong choice and it ruins everything? No, no, I just have to sit here not writing until I figure it out. Then I put it down on paper.

So my brain would seize up and I'd sit in front of the computer writing nothing and loathing myself and desperately wanting to cram Twix bars down my throat.

But when you're faced with writing 50,000 words in 30 days (1,667 words per day), ain't nobody got time for any of that. If you can't find the right word, you put down one that's close enough and then type the next word. If the sentence isn't perfect, that's okay, you'll make it perfect later. If that whole scene you wrote where the monkey turns into an eel has to be rewritten because you need it to be an alligator, and it probably should have started off as a lion anyway, you know what? Just start writing it as an alligator from here, and go back and adjust it later. No biggie. Just get the words down.

And when you do that--when you turn off that editor and just give yourself permission to let the words pour out of you--Guess what? They DO.

I know what you're thinking. "Sure, the words pour out of you, but what you're left with must be a steaming pile of dung." Or, to quote a dear friend of mine when I told her I was going to do this: "I can't imagine any novel you'd write in a month would be worth reading."

Absolutely, positively, 100% correct.

The first draft that you write by the end of your 30 days will most likely be crap. But here's secret #1: every first draft anybody ever writes, whether it takes them 30 days or 30 years, is crap. This is not me talking; I'm paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway, who said that 'The first draft of anything is shit.'. Look it up if you don't believe me.

There is something incredibly freeing about not stressing over the fact that your first draft will probably be crap. In my case, it allowed me to stop sabotaging myself by expecting something great to come out of my fingers, and just allowed me to write, and get that first draft down on paper.

Because here's secret #2: You can't revise a draft that isn't written. 

So why not get your first draft out there in the best, most efficient way possible? In a tried-and-true time-honored tradition, surrounded by a support group of half a million people?

Because here's secret #3: When you free yourself to write with 'literary abandon', amazing things come out of your brain. Ideas will seem to come from nowhere. Plot points you were worried about when you started will resolve themselves. Your characters will do things and become things you didn't anticipate, and they will be better than you thought they could be. There were whole characters I didn't know would exist, and whole sections of my book I had no idea what to do with when I sat down at the beginning of that NaNoWriMo. I understand why writers and artists talk about 'their muse'; it's the strangest thing to have your brain spit out things without consulting you first. It truly feels like you're channeling someone else.

And why? Because writing this way optimizes the associative way that our brain works. That might not be a quote from Hemingway, but there's a Ph.D from the best psychology program in the country backing up that claim for you.

As I say, I didn't 'win' NaNoWriMo my first year. But the next year, 2013, I did. And it was an amazing feeling.

I had a little more work to do to finish (my first draft came in at 123,000 words), but I finished that quickly. Then, I put it aside; I had read Stephen King's On Writing, and in it he advises writers to put aside their first draft for at least six weeks before starting to revise--but to keep writing daily on another project in the meantime. I figured, Stephen King is clearly doing something right, so doing what he does is worth a shot. So I began working on an idea I had for another novel; I approached it the same way I had approached NaNoWriMo: I gave myself a daily goal of 1,667 words.

Six weeks later, I had a completed first draft of my second novel. It had been a fairly vague idea when I started it--about a serial killer who finds his victims online--but it was a fully plotted book by the time I was done.

I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I can write a novel. I never have to doubt that again. Is it a novel someone will want to read? We'll see. But I now have a starting point to build from.


I can hear you saying "That's all well and good, Michelle, but it won't work for me." Okay, let's talk about that. Because I call shenanigans.

Here are the excuses I've heard from friends (they talk more about each on the NaNoWriMo site):

(1) I don't have time.

This is just not true. Sorry. It takes about 7-10 hours per week to finish the 50,000. Wake yourself up an hour early or go to bed an hour late, or (gasp!) cut out one hour of TV or Facebook per day, and you're just about there. Yes, I love NCIS as much as you do, and my life would not be as rich without those cute Lolcats my friends share on their FB pages. But you aren't giving them up forever. You can catch up on your shows in December, and there will never stop being new Lolcats. Seriously now. You can do this.

(2) I don't have anything to write about. 

First of all, yes you do. If I can come up with a novel out of 'Hey, there are some crazy people that hang out in World of Warcraft. Odds are one of them somewhere has to be a serial killer...Hey! That would make a cool book!', you can come up with one, too. Flip through the newspaper and check out the crazy crap you find there. Take a look at a shelf of books at the library, and pick one of them to change in some way, to make better. Take that really weird dream you had last night where you were a fighter pilot in an alternate galaxy with hyperspace aardvarks trying to eat your brain, and run with it.

Second of all, lot of people start NaNo with absolutely no idea in mind at all. They just start free-writing, and something comes. And they build on it. And build on that. They are no different or better than you. I promise.

(3) I don't want to write a novel. I'm more of a non-fiction/short story/screenplay person.

There is a whole group of 'rebels' who use NaNoWriMo to write things other than novels, including all of the above and more (even dissertations). So decide you're going to write 5 short stories. Or that how-to book you've always wanted to write. Go for it!

(4) I don't think I can manage the 50,000 words...I might be able to come up with 2-3 hours per week, but that's all.

That's okay! Set your own goal. Make it 25,000 words, or even 10,000 words. There are no blue meanies who will come out and spank you if you don't reach the 50,000 words (and if you like that sort of thing, I'm sure you can make your own arrangements to set that up as a motivating reward). Nobody cares. Everyone will cheer you for accomplishing however much you accomplish, because here's secret #4: even if you only write 5,000 words, that's 5,000 more than you had before you started. And that's awesome!!!

But I'm willing to bet that once you start, you'll write a lot more than you think you will. It's invigorating. It's freeing. And it's fun.

So, come out and join me for NaNoWriMo next month. Add me as your buddy--drop me a line at michellemchouinard@gmail.com, and we can exchange avatars. This is my third year, and this year I'll be starting a fun little novel called 'Accidental Divination'. I'll be posting my progress here, and need you all to hold me accountable!!

Here is a link to their FAQ page, which will answer all of your questions--but feel free to ask me anything you want, too, and I'll help you where I can.

What it boils down to is this: what do you have to lose? Nothing. But you stand to gain a lot. Belief in yourself. Your very own novel. Bragging rights. One thing crossed off your bucket list.

And if you're like me, it might even change your life.

M.

(P.S.: Secret #5 is that it really should be 'International Novel Writing Month' because people from all over the world do it in all sorts of different languages. So if you aren't in the US and you don't write in English, that still won't stop you!)

Zombie Flash Fiction Published!

I am so excited, October must be my lucky month! I just found out that the zombie flash fiction piece I wrote has been published on Every Writer!

You can read the piece by clicking here or on the picture below; because it's a flash fiction piece it's very short, only takes a couple of minutes to read (Warning: this piece does have some gore in it, so take a pass if that's not your thing). If you take a look, let me know what you think!

(Photo credit: Vorspiel by Ann Dunn)

Happy Halloween everybody--watch out for those zombies!! :)

M.

The One That Got Away: My piece has been officially published!!

Guess what?!?!

My flash-fiction piece has now been officially published! It's a fast read, no more than a minute or two, if you want to check it out.


You can find it by clicking here:

 The One That Got Away

Thank you so much for checking it out if you get a chance!

The Volcano Death March

(When I posted my 'ABCs of Me', I mentioned I hiked up a volcano, and got a few questions about that, so I thought I'd tell the story of it here. My apologies that the pictures were taken before I had a digital camera, so these are pictures of pictures. Otherwise, enjoy!)

I’m not a big fan of helicopters or small planes. I’ll fly in them if I have to, but only if there’s no other option.

So when my husband and I were picking the day trips for our our cruise to Hawaii, I didn’t want to do anything that involved helicopters. We knew we wanted to see one of the active volcanoes, and there were two ways to do that—take a helicopter trip, or take a hike.

“Let’s do the hike!” I said. “We’ll see our volcano and work off some of the buffet food at the same time! And we’ll get an authentic, real experience, see all different parts of the volcano, not just be dropped off at the top!”

It sounded like a good idea at the time, and we signed up for the volcano hike filled with optimism and joy, then held hands while we peered over the side of the ship into the sunset. Ah, to be so naive again.

On the day of the hike, they distributed waivers for us to sign as we rode out to the site. I’m pretty particular about reading everything I sign, and read through the extensive list of injuries that we might sustain, including death.

Death.

That’s a pretty intense word, and my husband pointed to it with eyebrows raised.

“They have to put that in there.” I said. “Even if it were a nature walk to look at butterflies, they’d make us sign that. Don’t be such a wuss.” He narrowed his eyes at me and shrugged.

A group of five guides met us when we arrived. The leader gathered us together and told us to listen up:

“If you have any injuries or heart problems, difficulty breathing, this hike is not for you. The bus driver will take you back to the ship and refund your money. If you think you’re in good physical condition, this hike will redefine your idea of what it means to be ‘in shape’. And if you’re not in good physical condition, this hike will help you find religion.”

Ha ha ha. Very funny. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t take that seriously from a group of five guys who were all chain smoking.

“We normally work on a very tight schedule, and today it’s even tighter because your ship has to leave an hour earlier than usual. So we’ll be moving quickly, and you’ll have to keep up.”

Wait, what?

“You will be given a pack that contains five bottles of water and two energy bars. You will need to eat at the midpoints to keep your energy up. If you can carry extra water, please do so.”

Okay. At this point, I started to get a little frightened. But still, I told myself, I work out, and I know my body—I know when to eat and how to hydrate. Five bottles of water for a day hike will be just fine, thank you. Carrying more is just plain stupid.

We headed out; for about twenty minutes we hiked down a paved road that was almost quaint; surrounded by solidified lava flows on either side, you could see the remains of road signs here and there embedded where the lava had wiped out everything in its path. 

Seriously, this is what you're trying to freak me out about?? Come on. I can do this with one foot tied behind my back. 

This is what all the fuss was about? I began to scoff internally. My elliptical back home is way worse than this! What a bunch of ka-hooey!

And then $*^# got real.

The road ended, and was replaced by trails of lava that extended forward and upward as far as the eye could see. Over each ridge of lava was another ridge of lava, because the flows pile up on top of each other in dreadlock-style rivulets of textured rock. And you have to climb these, up, up, up, to get to the top of the volcano and the site of the active flows.

Looks like you just have to climb over this, right? Nope. It kept going like this for two hours. 

This development did not please me. When I think ‘hike’, I assume there is some sort of trail, not just clambering up endless piles of black, unforgiving, volcanic rock.

This is also when the air started to get hot. I know what you’re thinking—well, duh, you’re climbing up a volcano. To a place where there are active lava flows. Which are made of molten rock. Of course it’s gonna be hot!

You’re right. You are. And I have no idea why that never occurred to me, but it didn’t. So this is where I should probably mention that my body and heat do not get along. You know how every year something like four or five people die in Arizona of heat exposure? I’d be one of those people if I lived in Arizona, even if I never left the air-conditioning.

And, to top it all off, we didn’t get any real rest breaks, because we were racing to complete the ‘hike’ in five hours instead of the normal six.

To sum up: I was on a 2.5 hour Stair-master trip directly to hell, which was very confusing for me, since I had always been taught that hell was found in a downward direction.

Yet, I am nothing if not stubborn. There was no way I was going to let our guides be right—I was gonna make it up that volcano if it killed me. I’d show them.

So I climbed. I trudged. I stumbled. And as I did, I drank water almost constantly. At one point, my husband poured a bottle of water over my head and you couldn’t even tell, because my clothes were soaked through with sweat. There was no way my five bottles were going to last even until we got to the top, let alone the trip back.

By the two hour mark, I needed all my focus to continue climbing. My eyes fixed directly in front of me, constantly searching for the next places to put my feet. I lost track of my surroundings completely, saw nothing outside of my direct path of vision. With every step, my body told me I couldn’t go any further, and my mind had to keep lying to my legs: just one more step, we’re almost there.

By the time we reached the top, where the flows mostly leveled out, I was done. The heat was coming off the ground in waves you could almost touch, like we were inside a convection oven. About half of the group had given up and turned back long ago, and I was still in the first 20% of our group to arrive. But that didn’t matter right then; my body had had enough, and I sank down to sit on the ground.

My husband, who had been a little bit ahead of me, came back to my side.

“Don’t stop now! The active flows are right over there!” He said.

“I don’t care.” I said.

“No, seriously, not more than fifty feet!” He said.

“That’s awesome for you.” I said.

“You’ll never forgive yourself if you miss this!” Said he.

“Bite me.” Said I.

But he was right, and I knew it. So I took some cleansing breaths, and I reached down deep inside to I don’t even know where. I stood up on legs that felt like overcooked ravioli, and began to move toward the flow, forcing myself to take every step.

Then, a voice rang out.

“STTTTTOOOOOOOPPPPPPP!!”

I stopped, and looked around to see which idiot was doing what stupid thing.

Predictably, the idiot was me. I was so focused I hadn’t noticed the patch of silvery ‘rock’ that indicated a live flow that was only just starting to crust over. I had stopped only inches from stepping into molten lava so hot I probably would have literally pulled back a stump and nothing more.

The one I almost stepped on didn't have any orange, just that smooth silvery look. 

The heat coming off of these was so intense, it actually messed with my camera. 

In light of this, my husband decided it was a probably a good idea to walk alongside of me for a while, and I managed to make it safely over to the red-and-orange active flows. 

I could not get closer than this to the lava, it was simply too hot. Even this was too much--as soon as the picture was taken, I bolted away from it.

They were truly awesome, in the original sense of the word, as in 'awe-inspiring'. And in the distance, the trails flowed all the way down into the ocean, sending up huge plumes of steam where the water met the liquid fire. It was beautiful, it was amazing, it was a monumental demonstration of the power of nature and the wonders of this earth. It was worth every bit of the torture it took to get there, and I don’t regret doing it for a minute.

But next time I’ll take the helicopter.

©Michelle M. Chouinard, 2014. All rights reserved.

The ABCs of Me...:)

Hello!

Laurel of Wads Of Stuff recently did an 'ABCs of Me' post to share a little bit about herself, and she inspired me to do the same. So here are some facts about me, alphabet-style! As she did, I'm taking a couple of liberties with a few letters that I felt were not the best for me.

A- Age? Yes, sadly, every day I age a little more. Oh, this is about how old I am? Look! Over there! A squirrel on a spaceship!! 

B- Best day? The day I got my Ph.D. 

C-Craving? Chocolate. Always chocolate. Or cheese. That'll work, too.

D-Difficult? Losing the ones I love.

E-Embarrassed? I don't get embarrassed easily, but when I do, I turn about as red as a tomato. I do stupid things all the time, though, so I've inured myself to most of that. The fastest way to embarrass me is to say something nice about me in front of a group of people. I suddenly don't know where to put any of my limbs, or my eyes.

F-Fear? I fear spinning my wheels because I haven't learned lessons I'm supposed to learn. 

G-Gross? Scatalogical humor. Yuck!

H-Height? five-foot-seven. 

I-Interests? Reading, writing, genealogy, psychology, scrapbooking/paper-crafting, cooking, tarot, history, art, nail art.

J-Joy? Writing.

K-Kids? Four kitties and one puppy. The cats may or may not be plotting to kill me (ala The Oatmeal), but my puppy has mah back.

L-Likes? Pina Coladas and walks in the rain. Oh wait, that's a song...

M-Music? Anything that makes me feel good and makes me want to dance.

N-Never? I will never watch E.T. Don't ask, you don't want to know. 

O-Once? Once I climbed a volcano. Next time I'll take the helicopter tour.

P-Pet peeves? I have several grammatical quirks that drive me nuts. I hate it when people misuse 'literally'. I hate it when people say 'less' when they should say 'fewer' (things you can count = fewer. So you have less sugar, but fewer oranges--you don't have less oranges. That's just ungrammatical). I hate it when people say 'The proof is in the pudding'--no, no it isn't. The expression is 'The proof of the pudding is in the taste.', and if you think about it, you'll see that makes a lot more sense. Also, if you say you 'could care less', that means you do actually care. What you're trying to say is you *couldn't* care less. And, to round off my list of crazy, I hate it when people say 'You want to have your cake and eat it, too.'. Everyone has their cake, and then eats it. The trick is to eat your cake, and still have it. The expression is 'You want to eat your cake and have it, too.'. Yes, I do know how crazy this sounds and that the only other Americans who says it this way was the Unibomber, and it's one of the reasons they were able to figure out who he was. So no, I'm not proud of it, but it is correct, dammit!!

Q-Quote: "I'm not afraid to fall, it means I climbed up high. To fall is not to fail, you fail when you don't try."

R-Religion? Spirituality.

S-Siblings? I have one half-sister. Love you!!! 

T-TV shows? Right now, it's Walking Dead, Orange Is The New Black, House Of Cards, The Big Bang Theory, The Goldbergs, Masterchef, Project Runway, and, if I'm honest...Real Housewives of New Jersey. I'm not ashamed. Not at all. Maybe a little. Don't judge me!!

U-Unique: I'm probably the only person on the planet who has a Ph.D but can't figure out how to get the battery out of my laptop computer. 

V-Vacation: I love Europe, cruises, and more and more I like nature-related vacations, like hiking in Point Reyes. 

W-Web? I have a website and two blogs. (see the 'About Me' in the upper-right corner if you want to check them out :) )

X-X-ray? I've had pretty much every part of my body X-rayed. And I've had a several scans, as well. I've had a bumpy life, injury-wise!

Y-Why? Why not?

Z-Zoo Animal? Tasmanian Devil. Although I would have also accepted meerkat and mongoose.

So what questions would you add to a list like this, for bloggers to discuss about themselves?