NaNoWriMo is killing me

One has to wonder why we intentionally place stress upon ourselves. Why we have the urge to challenge and push ourselves when we could just be spending free moments sunning ourselves in the garden with a good book. NaNoWriMo happens every year in the month of November, when crazy people decide to write a novel of a minimum of 50 000 words. Yep, this is not a joke, thousands of people all over the world take up this challenge. Being a little bit crazy myself, I decided to take up the challenge again this year, as I had managed it successfully last year. this year I worked out a more detailed plot scheme so it would be easier to write. However, with my current work load it's not always possible to write the required amount of words each day. This is causing me stress. One of the things to suffer in the month of November, is my blog. Today I thought to hell with it, let me at least update my blog before I get back to writing to try and make today's target.
The latest news, is that The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari is now available on Amazon.  Now I put pressure on myself planning the next adventure to write about.  June/July we're going to backpack through Egypt and the Middle East.  This has been a dream of mine ever since I was a teenager.  When I was about fifteen, all I wanted was to go and work and live on a kibbutz in Israel!

Our flights for Cape Town in December are booked.  We'll be leaving on the 13th December at some ungodly hour.  With Kerri flying in from China it's going to be a great holiday!  Part of the holiday we'll be staying at the family house on the Garden Route near Knysna.  I'm counting the sleeps already, but I have to conquer NaNoWriMo first!  Hopefully, can get a lot of writing done tonight and tomorrow morning as it's a public holiday.

Siobhan has been very active of late, taking part in a netball tournament, a horse show and this past weekend - she climbed Little Meru which is 3801m high!  One of the highlights for her, was one of our teachers who accompanied the students on the trip, who just so happened to be Australian (of course), who wore shorts, leggings and flip flops when everybody was wearing serious below-zero clothing!

The Associate by John Grisham

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was looking forward to this, not having read John Grisham for a while. Normally, I am caught up from page 1, but for some reason the story seemed to drag and it took me until three quarters of the way through to be gripped to read for greater lengths of time. The plot was a bit same-old, same-old, not fresh at all. The ending was very different though, in that there wasn't one. There was no closure, no sense of satisfaction, in fact I double-checked to see that the last few pages hadn't come loose and fallen out. The story just stopped ending so up in the air, it seemed unfinished. It wasn't a twist ending, it just stopped. It was almost as if his editor had given him an impossible deadline to meet. The first three-quarters was bordering on the tedious, the next bit was the usual gripping Grisham content you're come to expect, and then it stopped. I know I've said that a couple of times, but I'm just astounded it stopped when it did. Die-hard fans might still enjoy it, but there are so many other crime novelists with courtroom dramas around these days that have surpassed this quality of book. Yeah, I am a bit disappointed with this read.



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