nanowrimo

Gonna Write that Novel on The Snowy Day


As I mentioned yesterday, it’s NaNoWriMo time and I was musing about getting back to writing that actual first novel for once. So today, I started it. I have decided to fictionalize the life I didn’t have. The one where my natural mom kept me instead of giving me away to be adopted. I am going to say that so far, I am not envisioning an existence that is much of an improvement over the one I ended up with but it’s only chapter two.

I started using a planner again to map out my days and weeks, which is proving valuable in terms of cleaning, decluttering, and writing. Hopefully it will help me finish this novel. End goal? A short novel by the end of the month. And then we will see where to go after that.

In other news, it’s snowing like a bastard. I don’t know that I have ever despised winter as much as I do now. Snow has its sports but most of them are funding intensive. Winter is mainly a chore and a hazard for people who are forced by necessity to leave their homes and navigate the world. Municipalities have become worse and worse at making winter semi-endurable. Roads are shite. Sidewalks are worse. The inability to safely get about does nothing to make this season more appealing. I don’t care how pretty it looks.

When I was a kid, I loved snow. I spent hours outside. Sledding. Building forts. Skating. I was the last child in nearly every night. Pant legs frozen stiff and face chapped with wind burn. There was something peaceful about the dark with just starlight and a frozen moon looking down on you. But when you’ve adulted in winter as long as I have, the lustre wanes.

I was hoping the endlessness of day after day snowfall would hold off another month but that doesn’t appear to be our fate this year. And I still don’t have the snow tires on the truck. Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo 2022


I’ll bet it’s been a decade since I gave NaNoWriMo a go. I completed the task of writing a 50k novel in a month at least once, but once the blogging community died, so did the camaraderie of the event. Yes, they have a website and forums too, I think, but it was far more fun engaging with the bloggers and writers in my own circles, and those circles are long gone.

To achieve the end goal, I will need to write about 1500 plus words a day. It’s not really as hard as it sounds. 1500 words is five pages ish. The hard part is five pages and then five more pages that are coherent and connected. Those pages have to be going somewhere. Blogging is much easier because every post is self-contained. I am not trying to tell a story from one day to the next. So I am not at all sure I am up to this task at the moment.

Of course, on the other hand (because there is always another hand), does it matter? Does it have to be any good? It could just be an exercise in getting back to fiction writing. Priming that pump, so to speak.

It’s a bit late in the day to churn out six pages. If I do this, I will start tomorrow. And it’s not like I don’t have ideas. We are living in end times of a sort and perhaps instead of torturing my family and friends with my doom scenarios, I should just write one down. Or I could explore the life I think I might have had with my natural parents if society hadn’t shamed my mother into giving me up for adoption.

The bones of novels exist in my brain. Hell, they literally exist in a dozen scribblers squirrelled away in various drawers in my house. I have been writing stories since I could think. It’s really not that onerous a step to type them out.

One Down And One to Go


November 2009 Desktop Wallpaper Calendar 

Nablopomo ends tomorrow. Two more posts and I can breathe a bit.

 

I gave up on Blogher posting at day 18 because I just  can’t mommy blog mindlessly. I can’t. Don’t ask me to. Ironic in light of my inclusion in the top five of the Canadian Mom blogger’s list, I know, but I don’t claim to be a mommy blogger although I am a mom and I blog. I am too scattered and, as you know, uninterested in all things maternal to confine myself.

 

And my immediate family wouldn’t like it much if they were the sole focus of my writing, which wouldn’t happen anyway because as amusing and awesome as they are, they are not endlessly fascinating enough for me to write about continually or for others to read about endlessly.

 

An interesting side effect of the foray into the mommy blog world, however, has been emails from PR types wanting me to try products or post articles with link backs. I hadn’t considered that possibility. More readers and views, yes. Product whoring, no. Book reviews are okay but beyond that, I need to think about it a bit more.

Nanowrimo went nowhere – while we are on the subject of November goals. Between my normal schedule, the class I was taking and all the writing it entailed, an endless fight with the flu that is still ongoing and  blogging daily, I just didn’t have the extra key-pounding hours to write a short book. December goals do include looking over my three most promising WIP’s and seeing where to go next. I also need to look over my freelance work from the class I just finished and make a few decisions.

 

Finally, no, I haven’t heard from CB, and yes that worries me.

 

Amazing what 30 days can do for you.