While I managed to stay out of the black hole immediately after NaNoWriMo this year, it did manage to rear it’s ugly head later in December.

For a couple of months, let’s say the second half of December through to the first half of February, I did very little writing indeed. But the last couple of weekends I’ve managed to get some decent stretches of 500 words or more in. It’s not a lot, but it’s a new start after the post-NaNo black hole.

My goal for the coming week is to try and write at least 100 words per day. Which is very little in some ways, but balancing my time to do any writing at all during the week is enough of a challenge right now. I’ve also decided that, although I usually don’t work out my plots, I do need to sit down and work out at least a couple of chapters right now.

Balancing two story lines doesn’t seem like it ought to be complicated, but getting them to keep pace (at least roughly) in story time, is proving tricky right now. That might have something to do with the relatively small blocks of writing I’m putting in. Keeping track of how much time was spent in the last visit to the other story line gets tricky when that last visit was more than a week ago for the writer.

Strange though it may seem – at least it seems strange to me – I have now owned a plant for over 2 weeks. It has survived, and what’s more, I’m pretty sure it’s grown. Based on my past history keeping plants that’s quite an accomplishment on its part.

But the fact that it’s grown is now starting to be a problem I’ll have to deal with. it seems to be getting to a point where its stalks will no longer stay upright without any help. Right now I’m not sure whether or not that’s a bad sign of some sort. Guess I’ve got some research to do.

By popular demand: a photo of the subject and I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know I’ve managed to keep myself from making it look a bit worse on purpose to pre-emptively disguise any damage living with me might do to it.

I embarked upon something of an experiment yesterday: I bought a plant. This may not seem like an earth shattering event, but up until now I’ve never really been a plant person. In fact I’m still not sure I’m a plant person.

I do however like peppermint tea, which may have contributed to the mad up welling that led me to buy a peppermint plant when I saw them on sale at the grocery store. To put this up welling even further into context: I don’t currently own any pot that is meant to have a plant kept in it.

I’ve managed to get around that (for now) by combining a washed up plastic yoghurt pot and some Duct Tape (the latter mainly for appearances sake, so that my peppermint doesn’t claim to be strawberry yoghurt).

To be perfect honest I may have been over eager in giving this phenomenon it’s own category on the blog, but my intention right now is to keep the world informed of the plant’s progress. If nothing else that will force me to occasionally remember to water it.

As for the initial report. As far as I can tell the subject of the experiment is doing fine. I’ve made sure it has plenty of water, and am reasonably confident I haven’t taken this to the point of drowning it (yet). A quick visual inspection of my thumbs doesn’t seem to show any green shading yet though.