You know me.

That is sometimes a scary thought ... that someone knows you inside and out, good and bad, not just superficial acquaintances.

I spent the weekend with my sister writing for the 3 Day Novel contest at a cabin in the woods.  As the last tick-tock of Monday night flew by, we had very sore backs and butts, the giggles and two finished stories.

The time away was wonderful but not what you might call a relaxing getaway.  We wrote non-stop - between the two of us we accomplished just shy of 80 thousand printed words in three days.  That does not count all the back spacing and deleting required to get to the finished product.

The funny thing about the weekend was my sister had an unusual case of laryngitis.  She can only whisper.  She is not ill, but her voice hasn't come back yet after many, many weeks.  So, aside from needed to focus on writing instead of visiting - we couldn't visit much.  So after spending Friday evening until Tuesday afternoon together we probably typed double the amount of words we spoke - easily.

Why do I tell you this little morsel of random information? Because

My, how times have changed.

Or have they?

Doesn't the Bible say there is nothing new under the sun?  I have been pondering this lately.

What spurred my philosophical side is a few novels I've recently read. Novels that I felt a little disappointed in.  I am not a prolific reader as some of you may be.  In fact if you read my beginning few pages of this blog you will see that I hated reading for most of my life.  It was torture - so I didn't do it unless my passing grade in a class demanded it.

As an adult I acquired a more acceptable view of reading - "I will if I can learn something great from it."  Unfortunately that limited my reading scope to non-fiction that would knock your socks off. I can name them all because there only were three of them.

My mother-in-law tried to entice me with fiction when I was newly married.  She gave me a Christian fiction novel.  I think it was called The Wedding Dress.  I actually finished it!!  I was so proud of myself - in spite of the fact it took me over a year to do it.  To my recollection she was proud of me too and promptly handed

Can you help me decide?

I am entering another contest.  This one I join simply because it is fun and challenging.  I have no preconceived notions of winning anything.  All I want is the time away to write.  I participated in it last year and can't wait to do it again.

It is called the 3-Day Novel contest.  And it is simply who can write the best novel in three days.  And yes, there are actually people all around the world that think this is fun.  I am one of them.

Last year I wrote a story about a small town cop who discovers a mysterious woman moving into his town and even into his family. It is a comedy, a love story and a mystery.  Unfortunately on the last day I decided I wouldn't be able to complete the work with all the interwoven subplots in it - due to time.  So I spend three hours on the last afternoon deleting entire sections of the manuscript.  I closed the story off but it was VERY short. Most of my stories come in over 80,000 words.  This one was a dismal 37,000.  But I had fun.

I know where I went wrong though.