Island of Misfit Posts 12.03.18

I was supposed to write this two weeks ago because Lauren sent me to read a post from Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) about old school blogging just to blog, BUT it was

NANOWRIMO

At the end of October I went to a book signing for Jasmine Guillory‘s new book The Proposal.  She’s the absolute sweetest person ever and she was talking about her good writing time was 8-10 pm, not like 5 am like most writers say.  AND she’s still a practicing lawyer even though The Proposal is her second published novel. Anyway, when I was getting my book sign I told her that she was motivating me to go ahead and try Nano this year and she goes “girl! The Wedding Date was a Nano project! You can do it!”

So I did!  I didn’t win BUT I did write every single day in November.  Even Thanksgiving.  I got 30,000 words so I’m going to keep going and get the book finished.

To celebrate, I bought myself a new pen.  If I would have lost, I would have bought myself a new pen. Tomato, tomato.

(If you are new here, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and you challenge yourself to write 50,000 words a month.  I won once.  Click here.)

Tara Westover

My mom and I also got to go hear Tara Westover speak.  She’s the author of Educated : A Memoir.  I basically told everyone who asked what to read right now to read it.  She’s a fantastic speaker but she wasn’t there to just talk about the book.  She is doing a college tour (obviously I’m not in college, I snuck into the thing) about what an education means.

I took a bunch of notes.  Here’s some highlights:

An education is the process by which you develop a sense of self. 

Education is not a school.  It’s an abstract concept versus a physical location.  The best parts of an education are experiences. 

Education is not job training.  We lose everything that makes a person a use to themselves.  Job training makes them a use to someone else. 

Education is a privilege.  Some get a lot.  Some get a little.  It’s not a thing to self congratulate. 

Don’t let your education turn into arrogance… no education can be called “good” without some sense of empathy.

Look her up.  Read the book.

She signed my book AND tweeted my mom about meeting us.

Tsundoku

Tsundoku is the Japanese word describes piling up books to save for later, even if you’ll never actually read them.

This is my love language.

My other love language is blue eyed soul.  Double points if they are foreign.  And speaking of, this is my current favorite thing on the internet (still even after I was supposed to write this two weeks ago).

And because of this I have been listening to Canned Heat several times a day every day for the past 14 days.