In case you are interested, I had another piece at 50 Something Moms picked up for syndication in the upcoming week. I was thrilled but missed being able to tell Dad about it. He would have been so proud. As it is my family and extended family now know I am a blogger/writer and will no doubt be googling me, so I guess this was as good a week as any to have something for them to find.
The piece is called My Hollywood Wifestyle. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Today marks the first day of NaNoWriMo. Though I completed my 50,000 word task last year, I did not produce a novel worthy of publishing. However, it was not a wasted effort as I have recently stumbled on a plan for rescuing parts of it and reworking the story. The most important thing about last year was that I proved to myself I could write a book.
This year’s project has a similar theme to last when I attempted to write a fictional account of the last few years of my life. Today I will begin the actual account. I thought the distance of fiction would make it easier to write. It didn’t. And the story is begging to be told whether anyone ever reads it or not.
The goal at NaNoWriMo is to write for 30 days and reach a goal of 50,000 words. That is a very short novel. To achieve this one’s daily word output needs to meet or exceed about 1667 words. Sounds daunting but it is really quite doable. It’s only six and a half pages at 250 words a page.
In order to organize myself and stay on top of the page/word count, and propel myself from my arbitrary start point to finish, I am using a few books to help prompt me. One is Emma Mae Robbins Your Way: A Guide to Writing Your Own Life Story and the other was suggested to me by a fellow writer, Cindy La Ferle, Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas. I have spent time reading and incorporating their ideas into a kind of outline prompter. I don’t know if it will work. I plan to supplement the story with old blog pieces from my first year of widowhood and even posts from the message board I belonged to during my late husband’s illness. In addition there are the hundreds (over 500 I think) emails that Rob and I exchanged and our IM sessions.* I have a story to tell and it has substance to spare.
I did not plan on beginning this journey on a 30 hour road trip home from my dad’s funeral. An interesting twist of events that will no doubt influence the outcome.
I will blog throughout the month. Probably not daily, so if you haven’t got me on a reader yet – now would be a great time to do that (and I hate readers really because I lose site views and I really love to know that people have been here).
Wish me luck.
Leah McLaren is probably one of my favorite columnists. She writes for the Globe and Mail, and I envy the hell out of her job. I would love to be paid to have an opinion as opposed to just having one for free like I do here. She wrote a piece about long distance relationships back in August ago citing her own rather steady diet of them as the basis for her authority.
It seems that Ms. McLaren has always chosen her career over her relationship of the moment because she was not of the mindset that putting one’s relationship ahead of one’s chosen profession was the proper way to go about things. She felt that those who went in the opposite direction did so because they hated their jobs.
And that’s key.
Career versus job.
She makes the mistake that all people with careers do. They assume that the majority of the world works at something they deem a career rather than simply having a job that affords them (more likely not) with the means to live their lives. Most people I know have jobs. Jobs they would walk away from without a second thought if they won the powerball or someone offered to sugar-daddy them. Jobs can be great. They can be fun and stimulating and all those things that a career is – but they aren’t the core of who a person is. Not in my opinion.
I loved teaching. Lots of stuff about it I still miss. But it wasn’t my core. It didn’t fill me up. Or make me stupid enough to confuse work with life or value it above friends and family.
Very waspy way to look at things for a Canadian, I thought when I read her piece.
But I think many people have confused what is really important in this life. After all, if civilization as we know it ground to a halt in the next few years – and don’t think it couldn’t – what would you have going for you? If the job/career was gone? If you had to start with just the possessions in your possession right now and with the people who share your life right now. What then?
What does a life outside the model we have been conditioned to believe in look like?
anniegirl1138 