The deep freeze has returned to Minnesota. When I got up this morning to take Mason to a robotics club build at Washington, it was - 11 F/ - 23.89 C (I am forever fascinated that Alexa always wants to tell me two decimal points out when she calculates Celsius for me. Do you folks who use Celsius really go that deep?)

Yesterday, it was also cold. Even so, I ventured out of the house to have lunch with my friend Rosanne. We met up at a place over in Minneapolis called Butter Bakery Café.  I found it very easily, despite not having GPS. I mention this because on Wednesday night when I gave a ride home to one of Mason's debate colleagues, we used her iPhone's GPS app to direct me to her house.  It was pretty darn slick and made me think that, if cell phone packages weren't so expensive, it would be almost worth it to have a built in direction-sense. I don't get lost very often, but when I do, I tend to get REALLY lost. I once was nearly a half hour late to work because I forgot how to get out to Mounds View Library.

Butter Bakery Café has a nice parking lot behind their building, too, so that made me very happy. I arrived few minutes before Roseanne so I had a chance to check out their menu.  I have to say, the food was very much in the only OK category. As I told Rosanne, I love breakfast out and I was excited to see they had all day breakfast.  But, their "sunny side up" involved a lot more gooey gross bits than I usually like from my eggs, alas. I got the potatoes and wheat toast as sides, and the potatoes were serviceable, but nothing to write home about.  So, that was a bit of a disappointment, but I wasn't there for the food. I was there for the company and Rosanne is always good company.

She and her partner are retiring. For Rosanne this means graduating writing coach clients, which sounds like it's been a long disentanglement, which makes sense to me. We talked a lot about how it's kind of a shame that writing doesn't work like a regular job, because it would have been nice for her to have an apprentice to pass these clients on to.  

I also agreed to write a blog post for her about my experience with NaNoWriMo, because it's always been Rosanne's contention that it's better to form lifelong habits for writing, and that the competitive nature of NaNoWriMo can actually make you feel like quitting.  I fit that mold.  Not everyone does. I know a lot of people who really LOVE NaNoWriMo for lots of different reasons, but when I tried it I discovered very quickly that the goal set for me 2,000 words a day did NOT work.  When I'm writing original fiction I can't work that fast.  A huge part of my process is revision, which actually takes away words at the end of the day more often than not.  So I kept putting in smaller and smaller word counts and NaNoWriMo "helpfully" produced a graph for me showing my declining "commitment" and so I quit.  This is made ironic by the fact that without anyone's prompting, I've successfully had the discipline to write and finish several published novels. To be fair, though, I set my life up to provide some of the support that I think people really love about NaNoWriMo, which is the community it generates. There are classes and group meet-ups where you can hang out with other writers.  I forged my own writers group that met regularly, and I'm certain that without them I would have given up on my writing, too.

So, it could be a good blog. I just have to figure out how to be more articulate and witty. :-)

The only bummer is by agreeing to meet with Rosanne on Friday, I ended up missing my usual Friday gathering with other women writer friends.  I comforted myself by the fact that a number of us Wyrdsmiths (my writers' group) braved the slippery mess  of Thursday evening's snow in order to give naomikritzer feedback she needed on a short story for an anthology she was invited to contribute to. We meet at Nina's and the coffee shop was startlingly DEAD.

This upcoming week I'm going to meet-up with a friend of mine from high school who got in contact with me because she was looking for contract advice about a non-fiction project she was working on.  (This is partly why I ended up getting back in touch with Rosanne after all this time; I figured Rosanne knew about non-fiction contracts.)  

So, even though it's cold as heck, I'm still getting out and about and meeting up with people. But for now?  Now, I think it's time for a nap under some comforters.

Ja matta!