American Muslima Writer -Daring to Work Towards Jannah

"Muahahahaha!" She thunders waving her cat'o'nine tails high and raking them down the hapless victim's back in glee and furious might.

I whipped NaNoWriMo good!
I managed the incredible feat of beating out 50,000 words of literary pearls from the clutches of my mind in less than a month.


Hmm now for taking this pile of words and arranging them in PLEASANT to READ literary pearls...

that be 'nother task for 'nother month's undertakin'.....

It's a big Holiday time with E'id, Thanksgiving, Blessed Jummah, Hajj, Fasting of A'rafat, soon to be worldwide Chistmas and Hannakah season,
What is the best gift to get someone you love?
A gift that doesn't break with usage and time.
A gift with no batteries required.
A gift that will teach them something about life.
A gift that will open their eyes to the world around them...

J. Samia Mair has written about this wonderful gift in her Blog Article for the Baltimore Muslim Examiner

Holiday gift ideas and not just for Muslims! - The 'Many Voices' of Muslim authors

 Check out her other cool and insightful articles! Masha'Allah.

Well what have I been doing?

Avoiding too much sugar...yes. But sooo much more!
My friend I told y'all about is Homeschooling her 7 kids. And we decided to combine our Homeschooles.  SO now we have anywhere between 6-9 kids in the house at any one time.  I'm teaching the 5 younger ones (including my 2), while she teaches the older ones.  Alhamdulillah this month so far has been full of fun challenges!  First of all getting my kids up "early" and to her house by 9am. Wow can't beelive the wonders it has done for my scheduling! They wake up early and nap at 2pm when school stops and then stay awake til 8pm and then you guess it GO TO BED EARLY! YAY!! The sight of my children sleeping from 8pm til the morning nearly moved me to tears! It made me downright poetic! I've been trying for months to get them up early and sleeping early and IT NEVER WORKS!!!!!  I 've KNOWN they've always needed somehting to encourage them to face the day, something to look forward to.  Leaving the house and getting to play with their friends and did I mention leaving the house? has done the trick.  They get so exhausted by 2 they crash and quite frankly as son as I get home so do I.  I take a nap for a half hour to an hour and it's nice though.  I really am enjoying it so much.  It's amazing being able to work intimatly with the younger 5 in their various school levels.  There certainly is soemthing to be said for small class sizes!  They are even learning each others work.  The eldest girl of my group was learning number placing (Hundres, thousands, millions, billions, trillions etc...) and her younger sister joined in the lesson.  We went from number placing subject to the origions of words (like Latin) and the meaning of Million, Billion, Trillion and their root words Mi, Bi, Tri... etc... It was just fabulous fun.

What else am I doing?  Well brace yourselves~!

Writing a Novel

YUP! A whole Novel... in one month!!! National Novel Writing Month NaNoWriMo is the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel by Nov. 30.  So Despite my busyness in Hmeschooling and incorporating my new Home Cleaning Schedule and maintainging my Home Mangement Notebook, I've taken on a new book.
I've had the idea of a while now but never really fleshed it out! The title is " Forgotten "
It's going ok, I've gotten about 2,000 words so far which isn't too much liek my other friends have already 7,000 or so... I'm behind bu I'm happy at least I'm trying.  At the end of the month I'll have more words than if I hadn't tried at all, know what I mean.....

So wish me well and make du'a I can do it all.