Next month, I will take the challenge of writing 50k words in 30 days! I have started narrowing down which project I will work on. The perfect one would have most of its plot already known, be long enough that it would take fifty thousand words or more to tell it all, and would still excite enough interest that writing over sixteen hundred words a day, every day, doesn’t become a chore.

Having learned from last year, I also set up a way to pick a project at random, so I can bypass the over-thinking about what to work on if I do get stuck on my main one. With any luck, I won’t need any additional projects to boost my word count; it is more satisfying, that way. Should I try to finish early? There are only two days in November after Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, please, please, if you use laundry detergent with a fragrance or fabric softener, do not use it on the towels you cover your food with! It can absorb into the food. Cake is often affected, since covering it with a towel as soon as it is out of the oven helps prevent it from falling. I had the nastiest cake once – I swear, the dirt from my back yard tastes better than that cake did. (Yes, I know what that dirt tastes like. No, I never ate dirt. I fell and it smeared across my mouth.)

Our sense of smell detects the chemical compounds in the air. Our sense of taste detects chemical compounds in liquids. Something that gives off a fragrance does so by releasing chemicals into the air. If those chemicals are absorbed into a nearby moist, porous pastry, whoever eats the pastry may taste those chemicals – which taste nothing like how they smell.

OK, climbing off my little soapbox. Thank you for considering this.

The challenge begins two weeks from today. It is strange to think that the next time we communicate, I will already know if I need my contingency plans to succeed. Let’s go with not. I’m going to ace this!