Tonight I am finishing up court reporting work (to pay for all those Nutter Butters), so my word count today is quite small.  I humbly offer you my 305 words, a result of a five-minute typing up-chuck just prior to showing up here.  (Remember, the goal is speed, not quality.)  And thank you to everyone who’s down to groove and boogie on word counts this month!  We’re gonna have so much fun!  And don’t worry…soon we will have something widget-licious in the sidebar to illustrate all our hard work.

Lest you think I am discouraged by my admittedly slight word count, know you this:  I am not discouraged.  I am simply laying down the kindling, the foundation of an awesome Burning Word Man Bonfire — ooh! maybe — or whatever we end up doing.  So write each word for the flames and worry not for its future, for its destiny is now.

Ahem.

Yes, I am terribly silly.  But rest assured, all these shenanigans doesn’t mean real work is not being done.

Speaking of real work — meaning, the writing — I thought tonight I would share with you a fairly recent web find.  Perhaps everyone already knows about this website…after all, I just discovered Duotrope not too long ago.  (Yes, I’m the rotten egg.¹)  Anyway, at the risk of being the goober shouting out yesterday’s news, I wanted to bring it to your attention…in case you’re the goober standing behind me.

So for those of you who have yet to make her acquaintance, I want you to meet Miss Snark’s First Victim.

Now, I don’t know Authoress, the woman in charge, personally, and I feel compelled to reiterate that her blog is fairly new to me, but it’s apparent that she’s created something epic, as evidenced by her latest blog post entitled, “Another Success Story.” This is the blog’s seventh or eighth success story.  If reading this blog doesn’t make you want to chain yourself to your desk until the novel is finally done, then I don’t know what will.

Once all the dead-tree traffic has cleared off my desk, I plan on sitting down and reading as much of Miss Snark’s First Victim² archives as I can.  And if you are serious about finding an agent for your novel-length project, I recommend you do the same.

These are our tribesmen, folks.  When you come across little hamlets of wonderment like this on the Internet, and the people are doing what you wish you were doing, then that’s where you need to pitch a tent and make some friends.

So go on…try to get a good spot.  I’ll catch up later with some beers.  First, I want to find the wood surface of my desk…I think it’s wood…it’s been a while since I’ve seen it.

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¹ Let my last-to-show-up-rotten-egginess be a lesson to you:  read, read, read! Learn about the industry you are trying to break into!  I am mostly directing these exclamation points at myself…just so you know!

² I also thought I should mention that Miss Snark is another blog on my archive-diving list.  It seems like every aspiring writer worth their salt knows of the legendary Miss Snark and her “T-Rexual heels of stiletto snark.”  Two and a half million hits over two years before Miss Snark retired the blog.  You know the rule.  If all the locals eat there, you know it’s gotta be good.