On this blustery Christmas Eve, I'd like to wish all my readers and friends the compliments of the season.
     I have posted a photo of a detail from my Christmas tree. As music is so important to me, my tree has a musical theme. Amongst the ornaments featured here, you might be able to spot a cherub playing the flute (bottom left), an angel plucking a harp (right), a gold musical note, and towards the top left, my newest tree ornament, a silver grand piano. I bought this in the summer when we visited the Christmas shop in Rothenburg, Germany. It felt strange to be amongst all the trappings of the festive season during a hot summer's day, but since then I have been looking forward to placing it on the tree.
     I didn't have space to take a full length photo of the tree, because it is in the front porch. When we brought our kittens home six years ago, they were very adventurous and would chew anything that moved. Five months old when Christmas came around, they proceeded to climb the tree and bite the decorations at every opportunity. I made sure that there were no glass ornaments, but the day we discovered that they had pulled one of the plastic baubles apart, leaving a sharp wire exposed, we decided to remove the danger. Each Christmas since then, the tree has been put in the porch. The cats possibly wouldn't go wild about it now, but we can't be sure as they are still full of energy and will pounce on anything that looks tempting. This year on the day the decorations came out., they were both inside the Christmas tree box, attacking the string that secures it. So for now it is staying in the porch.  
     With all good wishes for Christmas and for 2014, wherever you may be.

I have done more writing this November than in any other month in my life. This was because I decided to take part in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. This is a writing challenge, to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November - just thirty days to write the equivalent of a Pocket Novel.
     Originally I dithered. Could I fit that amount of writing around my other activities? I knew that the last day of the month would be a particularly busy one, so it meant that there would be no last minute flurries of typing. However, last year I did write one thousand words a day for two separate blocks of time. During the second block I did the first draft of a Pocket Novel, but ran out of story after 37,000 words. If I was to finish NaNoWriMo, I would have to make sure that I had enough story to get to the end.
     I had an idea for a Pocket Novel during the summer, but had put it on my list of proposed books to write in the future. With just a few days to go before the end of October, I had a few less busy days, so I began to scribble my ideas, think up names for characters, and noted down plenty of scenes and events to fill the story. Then I took the plunge and signed up. 
     I aimed to write two thousand words a day, knowing that I would feel less stressed if I didn't manage to write anything on one or two days. I had a pretty crowded diary for the first week of the month, so one day did go by with no writing. But I discovered that my wrists held up to the onslaught, and I managed to reach my target most days. I was actually amazed at how disciplined I could be. Instead of reading my emails as soon as I switched on the computer, I left them until I had written my daily quota. I logged my word count each day, watching with huge satisfaction as the total rose towards that magic fifty thousand..
     Being the type of person who doesn't like to give in ("I've started, so I'll finish" should be my catchphrase), I was determined to reach my goal. I was surprised to find that I actually went slightly over the word count a few days before the end of November, and I would actually like to add a little epilogue to tie up all the loose ends. 
   I have the first draft of a new novel. There's still a lot to do, but I will begin to polish it once I have finished working on the saga that I was revising before I plunged into NaNoWriMo. 
     I may even do it again next year.