Ladies and gentleman, RightGirl is leaving the building. I will be taking the month of November off to withdraw from the exciting and disturbing world of Islamoterror and focus on fiction. Well, the quasi-fiction that I write in my off moments: pieces of my past mixed with elements of my today and a little fantacizing of how it should have all turned out.

Two years ago, unemployed and bubbling over with catharsis over the relationship that changed my life, I took the NaNoWriMo challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I succeeded. This year (with no election to distract me as it did last year) I will take the challenge again. Again I am working through something large, something that causes the words to spill out on a daily basis anyway, so I may as well link them all together. NaNo helps because it gives me the discipline and support a lazy bitch like me needs to finish a large-scale project.

Once more I will spend November developing writer's callous on my right middle finger (I prefer to write the old fashioned way - on paper), eating grilled cheese and living on hot chocolate with a hefty dash of cayenne pepper. Don't knock it - food, like sex, should always hurt just a little. Or a lot, depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing...

So let me spend my 30 days purging my body & soul of whatever is weighing so heavily upon it. I need this. I'll try to check in from time to time, to let you know what's inspiring me on the iPod, or to share a passage of what I've been working on. But you'll still be looked after. Kathy Shaidle is on board, as is Richard Evans. And with any luck EM Zanotti will share her Friday Random Ten with you for the next four Fridays. This will all start on November 1. Until then... probably silence, or maybe a picture of a pumpkin on Tuesday. I have to get out of the Islamofunk and into the right frame of mind for what I'm about to do.

In the meantime, here's a snippet of what I gave birth to in 2004. The story is called Pandora's Woe.

Packing up the house didn't get any easier. In fact, it got harder. Ellie and Chris couldn't be there with me every moment. I spent a lot of time in the car, running away from it. I was driving all the time again. When I took up with Chris, I really cut down on my driving. But with the house and everything, well, it was easier just to hit the road. I couldn't sleep when it was dark, and the further we went into October, the longer the nights were. I also couldn't pack when it was dark. Too depressing. All I could do was drive. Which left the daylight hours for packing and sleeping. I couldn't bring myself to do much of either. I didn't drink as heavily as I had the night Ellie and Chris were there, but I was still going through a good deal of bourbon. Southern Courage, it should have been called. I also started taking more of the Valium from the medicine cabinet. It had been prescribed for me years before, and I'd hardly ever taken any of it before Papa went into the hospital. Before that, he would give me some on the really bad nights, but mostly I just took bourbon. The original bottle had been way past the expiry date when I finished it, but it didn't matter. It still did the trick. By the time I began packing up the house, I was on my fourth bottle just that year.

I went through my closets, clearing out piles of old toys, school reports, and other memorabilia. The scrapbook of my accomplishments ended in sixth grade. That was the year that Mama died. I didn't accomplish much after that, and besides, even if I had, who would have recorded it? I couldn't take everything with me to the new apartment. Stuffed animals that I'd been holding onto for more than a decade would have to go. Pictures I'd drawn, stories I'd written, and books I'd read. It would all have to go. I was throwing my childhood away, not just leaving it behind. Most kids got to grow up and move out, and when they did, their parents safeguarded the evidence of their youth. I didn't get to grow up naturally - it was demanded of me. And there were no sentinels to protect the few precious remains of a childhood cut short. Did I have the space for class photos and swim team medals? Who was even left to care if I held onto the fourth grade science project I got an A+ for? Parents aren't just the people who store your stuff. They actually care about it. Try to get a mother to part with a half-burned baptismal candle. Now try to get an orphan to find space in her life for it. I had to let so much go. Even the things I kept for sentimental reasons would have to stay packed away in boxes, out of sight, probably never to be looked at again.

So out it all went. The baby blanket, the report cards, and the poorly made ashtray I'd given Papa for Father's Day when I was eight years old. Mama would have kept all these things; they would have mattered to her. But my future didn't have space for the past.