Today marks the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month...and click at your own risk as it looks like an influx of prospective novelists might have crashed the site).

I would LOVE to do this, but know already that this November is going to be a bad time to commit to something as intensive as writing a novel. The purpose of NaNoWriMo is just to get words on paper. 50,000 of them, or ~175 pages - a novella, if you will. But in my mind, if you're going to get words on paper and call them a novel, they should string together in some sort of coherent fashion and all arrive at the same place in the end. They call that a plot.

I do not have time this month for a plot.

I do, however, love the idea of a public commitment to writing every day. Technically, that's what a blog is supposed to be, right? So I've decided that if I know I can't do a good job with NaNoWriMo, I'm going to have my own JenBloWriMo (Jenny's Blog Writing Month...and get your minds out of the gutter...I know there's a "blo" "mo" joke there, but I won't make it). This is my commitment to write every day this month - and to try to write something worth reading, too.

To kick it off, I want to offer something wonderful for your listening pleasure: the Surprise Me Mr Davis Late Night High Sierra set, streaming courtesy of Percy Boyd (aka Nathan Moore).

I wrote earlier about the amazing experience that was their sundown set in the Big Meadow, but upon listening to the late night set again, it's hard to tell which show was better. I still think the jam in "For The Paper Boy" is the most brilliant single thing I've heard in years, but the late night show is full of truly transcendent songwriting. I especially love "When a Woman," which has the resonant gravitas of a truly timeless song and "When a Little Boy," whose chorus actually made my cry the other night. It's so rare that lyrics are able to capture slippery emotions like wonder and optimism; it's even rarer to find them paired with music as rich and complex as this. Further proof, really, that SMMD is one of those truly special bands where the sum is greater than the parts.

I've been listening to Bob Dylan a lot lately too, and thinking about great lyricists. More on that later. I promise.