My youngest son has apparently learned the word, “Shit.” Not sure where. Must be the babysitter. Or Grandma. Sh*t! Now he is holding the dustpan, which is about the same size as himself, and saying the offending word again and again.

In other news, today is my birthday and the day before my sudden marriage, and in honor of these occasions, I am giving away two spaces in my amazing course. It is not terribly immodest of me to say this because the course includes an amazing community which we’ve already started to build this month in the Framing Your Book stage. It also includes technique boosts, inspiration and encouragement, coaching and emergency aid.

For the first month, you can and should also sign up for NaNoWriMo, which will help you get through your first 50,000 words. Then Gathering Your Materials will keep on going until you have a full-length book manuscript. And whatever the condition of that manuscript–don’t worry: from mid-January through February, I will offer a revision course.

Here’s the thing: most people secretly want to write a book. Some of those people have never written a thing and others have published, but still it’s sort of a secret. Like calling your own course amazing, admitting you want to write a novel in a country that doesn’t greatly value art carries with it a bit of shame, I suppose.

When I was about thirty, I started taking hip hop dance classes. I am pretty bad at it, and I was taking the classes in New York, where other participants included chorus dancers for Broadway shows and serious club folk who tear up dance floors on a regular basis. As I danced with my mirror-image, I often found myself saying to myself, “I can write. I can write.” But by the time I was thirty, I knew that life was too short to do only those things I was good at. I had to dance, whether I could or not.

So should you write a novel whether you can or not. But everyone needs that guy or gal at the front of the classroom showing them the steps–again and again and one more time. For Gathering Your Materials, I am going to be that person–through podcasts, online forums and Skype phone calls. Yes–we have folks in Georgia, Los Angeles and Emeryville in our group. (Note bene: I will not wear any spandex, which even online would not be a pretty sight.)

So . . . throw your hat into this novel-writing circus ring. ALL you have to do is post a comment, and I will put your name in a hat, and draw out two lucky winners who will be inundated with inspiration and creative encouragement for six weeks. You know you have a book in you. I know you have a book in you. (Angie adds: This is a cheaper way to get it out than going to the doctor . . . )

Tell your mother. Tell your co-worker. Tell your favorite writer.

Sure, sometimes, like Charlie, you’ll find yourself saying, “Shit, shit, shit” for the sheer pleasure of the sound or the reaction on the faces of the people around you. Sometimes, you’ll be saying, “I can dance” or “I can run a seven-minute mile” or “I can tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Grey’s Anatomy.” Sometimes, just sometimes, you’ll think, “This is amazing.”

“Whatever works” is the motto of the six-week-novel.

You have until Oct. 24 to post your comment, and then the winners will be declared. Go on. I dare you. Get ready to write your book.

I am on vacation. It’s a working vacation, in that I brought the kids and their attendant need to eat and have their diapers changed and go places to play, and I brought my computer and the online course I am teaching and my blog and everything else that can now e-follow me wherever I go. But still, this afternoon Angie and I left the kids with Grandpa and Nana and went into town to have a milkshake and hang out in the bookstore, Copperfields, which happens to be wonderful. And I have spent the past two mornings in a park on Valentine’s Street in Sebastopol, meeting conversational, open-minded, intelligent mothers (and a few fathers)  and their charges and the occasional friendly dog.

Maybe it’s because Sebastopol is a small town, but being in the park here is like being at a brunch. You really talk to people. Everyone who comes into the park smiles at you. There is a strong sense that we are all here together. Not just co-existing as we pass each other in our busy lives, but sharing an experience together.

Being at a park in Berkeley–especially Totland–is more like being at a dance club. There’s a lot going on–movement, frenzy, action–and you may smile at someone and then you may not smile at someone else and you might dance by someone and talk to another person and even buy a drink for a third, but most of the people there are involved with their own groups and it’s too loud to talk for long or to everybody.

Maybe it’s the way this Valentine park is designed. Maybe it’s the slightly lower cost of living here. Maybe it’s just my being on vacation, being relaxed. I loved it, whatever it was.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been a little overwhelmed. Launching an online course, working with editing clients, getting ready to write a novel next month, taking care of my little fellows, figuring out childcare options, watching my insufficient retirement resources (which, honestly, I am using now instead of when I am old, when I fully expect to be working until I die) plummet in quantity, dealing with trying to get married before the out-of-state Mormons yank my right to do so away, trying to get to picture-lock on my short film so it can be finished and sent out into the world, shoring up my old and falling apart house, not to mention cleaning it . . . I don’t know . . . I’m feeling tired.

Chai lattes help. Showers help. Vacations help. Grandparents help a lot. But I have again been reminded of the root of all my misery. I haven’t been reading novels.

I read The New Yorker, and I read some blogs, and I read Egri and this and that from my piles, but for some reason, I read novels in spats. I’ll read four in a couple of weeks and then go back to The New Yorker. Today, I picked up a couple of volumes at Copperfield’s, and just now, I cracked one, and suddenly . . . I relaxed.

It’s as if I trained, as a child, to lead these other lives, in secret gardens and dumb waiters, in attics and at Paddington Station and in Milwaukee and on the prairie and inside the walls of houses, with spools for tables and buttons for platters*. I learned to expect complications and growth and some resolution. The tangled threads of my own life, with its confusion of themes and uneven character arcs, bewilder the reader I am, first and foremost.

Entering the world of a book, the voice of the narrator capturing my attention, the story drawing itself across my imagination, makes everything feel right again. In a book, I know what to do, the right kind of attention to pay. An ardor rises up in me, a feeling of connecting to life itself, a life full (but not reeking) of meaning. Attending to it is pleasurable and worthwhile and productive.

I suppose that I am at my best as a writer when I feel that way about the actual world itself, when I can peruse the vegetables at the market with the same passion for sensate detail and follow the chaos at the playground with the same curiosity about humanity, believing that in time, it will all be ordered into a thing of beauty and character, into a story. And that surely I will be the one to do it.

*The first three people to name the greatest number of the books alluded to in this list,  will win free, transferable tuition to my Gathering Your Materials course. To enter, email me the list and your name and contact information by Oct. 20th Thanks.