Happy Dia de Los Muertos, and Happy Nanoing!

Hi! It's Friday, it's the First of November, and you know what that means. It's Nanowrimo. It's the Day of the Dead. And it happens to the start of what hopefully is a great month.

First off, Nanowrimo -- writing a novel in a month. Yes, I'm participating. (Q: What should I be doing write right now? A: Not writing blog posts!) My idea is weird, and involves rebellions, other worlds, and Mozart. It's titled "The Wolfgang" for right now. I might be referring to it obsessively over the next month, and shall usually abbreviate it to WG.

Now, yea, I haven't finished my other draft. I'm decently sure I can keep up 3k words a day -- 2,000 words for WG, and 1,000 for WR. ("Wretched Roads". Mages, healers, and curses, if you care to know.)

As for Dia de los Muertos... It's a Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, honoring dead loved ones. I've written about it before, a couple weeks ago. So instead of a long rant on something that has little relevance, here's a list of Spanish words:

• Calaveras -- skulls. Also, there are calaveras de azucar (accent on the u), which are sugar skulls. 
• Calacas -- skeletons.  From what I know, these are very popular, like Halloween skeletons are popular: toy skeletons on the altars or for the children, cloth/plastic ones on poles that they parade through the street, etc.
• Altar -- well, an altar. Not too hard to figure out. The table on which they set offerings of food, flowers, and photographs to the dead loved one.
• Cempachusil (accent on u) -- marigolds. They put these "flor de los muertos" (flowers of the dead) on the graves or altars of loved ones. 
• El pan de los muertos -- bread of the dead. Literally, bread they leave on the altar for their loved ones.

 

November is a grand, brown-ish, most-definitely-autumn month. It generally means cold, lack of sleep, picking up the academic pace, and writing a novel for me. But it's also full of colorful leaves, and days off from school for Thanksgiving, and snuggling under five or six different blankets without feeling stifling-hot.

So, here's to dead people, writing too much too fast, and a brown month full of leaves and cold. Who says a little cold is bad for you, after all? It clears your lungs from all those words that scratch at your ribcage, ready to crawl out.

Have a blessed Friday and weekend!