I launched my website last night.   My husband and I had a private launch party at IHOP this morning.   Last year I had hinted that I wanted to have a website and he gave me a domain name for Christmas and then introduced me to a talented website developer.   I told her I wanted a quotation field, and yesterday, as I began to add content  to my site I also began to add my favorite quotations.   The first source I turned to was my “Quote Box,”  a small metal box filled with 3×5 index cards of quotations I collected in high school and through college.

I had filed them meticulously, with bibliographic references on the back of each card and the date I added it to the box.    As I sorted through the cards I was able to chronicle my eras of idealism, my period of interest in Chinese poetry, the influential class I took on Philosophy of Science at Bryn Mawr College.   I could see my handwriting deteriorate from its former neat printing or cursive writing.  Some quotes were even typed on an old manual typewriter.    Although I still love quotations,  I wish I had maintained the habit of collecting them.  What would have been the quotations for the thirty years since I stopped adding to my box until I started searching for quotations with renewed vigor yesterday?  I fear that the deterioration of my handwriting paralleled the change from the idealism of my youth to the too often cynicism of my adulthood.    One of the quotations I stumbled upon yesterday was from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.”   I am hoping that as I approach fifty-five I can climb again, not the hill of my youth, but a different hill of hope and optimism that I have forgotten for too long.

In a little over two hours, National Novel Writing Month begins!  The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30  days of November.  I planned to participate two years ago, but this year I am determined to finish.   50,000 words in 30 days is a mere 1667 words per day. I plan to emulate my favorite author, Anthony Trollope, and spend my commuting time on my novel.   So farewell to facebook from my iPhone and games of Spider Solitaire and Bookworm.      It’s not too late to sign up!  This year I really will write my novel.