Bindi Bloated

I am mired once again in an insomniac haze, burdened by visions of that little International Wildlife Promoter Bindi Irwin and her thumbs-up announcement of her bloody "it's every girls' dream to have a doll that looks like her" doll.

Being in Australia and all, I figured I'd see her on the news from time to time: at a zoo opening; fighting for the rights of Irukandji "I'll kill you dead" jellyfish; or falling from an elephant. But she's everywhere and will continue to be everywhere for the rest of our lives. I'm sure we'll all be able to follow her through her various rehab stints in ten years.

But that's not going to help me with my insomnia. So I decided to get up and think about writing. I also just today signed up for National Novel Editing Month. Next Saturday, March 1, while drinking a beer in Sydney Airport waiting to fly to the States, I will take out the 200 pages I wrote during National Novel Writing Month in November and begin the hellish task of editing.

My goal is to ignore the split infinitives, misspelled words, dangling participles and every other menacing mistake until I've pored through all the words and filled in holes, expanded characters' neurosis, and add some adjectives. At the end, if I finish the required 50 hours of editing work I need to put in to be deemed an NaNoEdMo winner, I will consider it draft No. 2 and eventually begin again.

But then where does my memoir go? That is also what's kept me up tonight. So the document is open, on page 277, and I'm only 23 years old. Maybe by March 2009 I'll be ready to edit that for NaNoEdMo.