Hello friends!

While I sometimes (very, very rarely) come to Myspace . . . I DO actually use Facebook. So if you send things to me here and never, ever hear back, your chances get a lot better on Facebook (or just e-mailing me or commenting on my site).

If you want to be FRIENDS, I am here:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=628862785&ref=name

Every year around this time, I get loads of notes asking me if I am doing NaNoWriMo. (That's National Novel Writing Month, if you've never heard of it. It's where people set themselves the task of writing a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and midnight November 30th.)

I usually say that NaNoWriMo is kind of my life. Every day around here looks like NaNoWriMo. This year, however, I am participating rather literally, as I am finishing up a book deadline on almost the same timescale! Since people have also been asking if I have any tricks or clever tools to help them through the experience, I thought I would share a few PROFESSIONAL THOUGHTS to guide you through an intense 30 day writing stint and make it through to the end. Some of this is guesswork, but it's all based on my own experiences.

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So the other day, Lauren Myracle writes to me and says, "I CHALLENGE YOU TO A HALLOWEEN SCARE-A-THON."

And I was all, "Okay! I'll do it! Also, what is that?"

Because I will often say I will do things long before I ever have the slightest idea what they are. I find that this keeps things interesting.

So she explained that she is challenging 13 authors (me, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, Libba Bray, Holly Black, M.T. Anderson, Melissa De La Cruz, Cassie Clare, Shannon Hale, Kirsten Miller, John Green, Sarah Mlynowski, and Stephenie Meyer) to do something that REALLY SCARES US by the Halloween. This thing must be recorded, either in blog or video format, for the world to see.

So I thought I had this one in the bag. Not that it is a competition . . . but I was still SO GOING TO WIN. I was going to win this in the same way that I used to say I was going to WIN several plays I was in by saying all my lines fastest and knocking over the other actors until I achieved VICTORY!

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Go away for two weeks and what happens? ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD BREAKS.

Oh, sure it SEEMS bad.

Okay, it IS bad.

I guess I'm going to have to fire some of my staff—the guy who polishes all my doorknobs with gold dust-infused butter, the professional remote control operator, the person who sits on my sofa and gives French braids to all my guests, regardless of whether or not they want them or have enough hair for them . . . These are not the times for such luxuries. I knew it couldn't last. But there are some really good things about the collapse of the world economy. I thought it would be good to bring them up.

Here's one big one: in many ways it forces us to do things that we really had to do anyway. Like use less stuff. We have been wrecking the environment with all our buying and buying and buying and throwing stuff away. Reusing, swapping, and repairing will be IN! And that's excellent!

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I'm sitting here listening my holiday iMix. At the moment, that means I am listening to Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." You may be wondering why, since it is October 1st. Even by the most extreme standards, this is a little too early for holiday music.

I would argue that, actually. If you have been reading this for a while, you will know that I love HOLIDAY CHEER in the same way that I love ABBA. I am a holiday freak! I come from a family of holiday freaks! (OK. My mom.) Also, Bing Crosby! It's always time for Bing.

But there is a specific reason. I am listening to holiday music because LET IT SNOW COMES OUT TOMORROW.

Some of you might not know what that is, so let me explain.

About a year ago, John Green, Lauren Myracle and I thought it would be a very good idea to work together on a three-author book—three separate stories that took place in the same town during the same storm, over Christmas. So we did.

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RRight before I left New York, I noticed that the annual "street fair of death" had come to my neighborhood again, with it its questionable, rickety rides designed to thin out the population, one carnival ticket at a time.

Oh, they don't CALL it the "street fair of death," because they don't care about the truth. They call it a fun fair. That's exactly what they called that festival of bad ideas I went to in the Midwest, where the biggest attraction was a crane manned by two fourteen year old guys—the one that had a cardboard sign that said, "crane rides $5" and when you gave them the $5 they would hoist you up and swing you.

And people thought I was crazy for refusing to do it.

But any of you who have read this blog for longer than a minute know that I have a healthy appreciation of fear. I am good with fear, in the same way that some people are good with wine.

But all of that is hastily put aside for Roller Derby.

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I just got to England. I'm sitting here now with my tea. I Twittered about my plane, which was called the Dancing Queen, and the fact that they played Abba on the Dancing Queen, and then the Dancing Queen got stuck on the runway for about three hours because Air Force One had just been at JFK and all the planes were backed up.

Just in case you think I make these things up, I took a picture:

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I was having one of those days today when I forget how to take my watch off. Does this happen to you ever? You've taken your watch off hundreds of times, and then you just . . . forget? You pull the latch and pull it and nothing happens and you start flailing and yelling, "It's a trap! It's a trap! GET IT OFF ME!"

And when this happens when you are sitting at a table full of other writers who are ALREADY a little scared of you because you are on deadline . . . and there you are clawing at your watch and screaming about traps . . . well, it can be embarrassing. So when one of them calmly suggested that maybe I should take a break for a minute and update my blog, I listened.

What I found was that the post I fired off last week was quietly collecting 204 comments. 204 REALLY INTERESTING comments. So while I had many shiny things to get to, I feel compelled to respond to a few of them.

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Friends, I have a serious, topical question today. We will be returning to disco balls immediately . . . trust me. I have one on my desk right now, locked and loaded and ready to go.

But let's just talk for one second, okay? Because I am worried about you guys. And I want to try to answer the question . . . why are people talking about Bristol Palin?

Brisol Palin, for those of you who have managed to avoid all forms of media for the last 48 hours, is the daughter of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Bristol is seventeen years old and five months pregnant, and she has the extreme misfortune to be in the middle of a contentious presidential race.

This makes me so queasy, I find it hard to type.

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I've been getting a lot of comments and e-mails from you guys recently about the Internet. Some of you have written to say that you are obsessed by something or someone and can't stop looking for updates, or notes, or news. Others of you have studying or other things you have to do, but you can't seem to break your electronic connection. Still others of you write and say things like: "PLZ HALP! My family is taking me to a CABIN in the WOODS to be EATEN BY BEARS and we have NO INTERNET and I am going to DIE."

I am glad you came to me. I can help. And my help starts with me telling you something that may shock you to the very, very core. Are you ready?

THERE WAS NO INTERNET WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL.

I realize that this will make me sound like I was born in 1901 like Edward Cullen, but I wasn't. We had The Simpsons when I was in high school. We had Law and Order. But no Internet. See, the Internet is just not that old.

Well, okay . . . TECHNICALLY there was an Internet when I was in high school, but it wasn't very fancy, and pretty much no one knew about it, and you couldn't really do very much with it. I think it was just some crap like the lunch menu at the Pentagon and you could only get to it through a phone line if you were a complete computer wizard who made jokes about binary code.

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