I joined a writer's group about five years ago and that first year I learned about something I couldn't really pronounce. I think the awful acronym prejudiced me at first. NaNoWriMo Was that a language used in Star Trek? No. It stood for National Novel Writing Month. Okay, got it. But what month was it? November. Surely it was a joke, wasn't it? Who would choose November to be the month where they abandon most other pursuits and devote inordinate amounts of time to writing, from scratch, a brand new novel? I'm usually making other things from scratch, like homemade rolls and pies. You know for that little, itty-bitty holiday we call THANKSGIVING! Sorry for the all caps, but I opted out of NaNo four years in a row because I felt surely a man chose the month. If you know me, you know I enjoy my baking. Don't mess with my baking! I digress. November is busy for me for lots of other reasons too. Family birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas preparations. So I'd always passed. Until this year. About mid-October some stray thought caught me by surprise. It sounded a little like this, "You know that idea for a book you had back in April? You should write it for NaNo." That might have been all that came of it until a certain friend suggested it too. And before we knew it we were on our way to planning and plotting how we could make it work.
My personal goal was to finish before Thanksgiving. Which is tomorrow.
And I did it.
I DID IT!
(I know, more all caps, but at least I only used one exclamation point.)
The new novel is written.
I landed at 50, 892 words over the course of 20 writing days.
It's a rough draft and won't be ready for readers for quite some time, but it is full of pure fun and I had a blast getting it down on the page. It has a working title that I am not announcing. Kind of like a baby name you don't want family members to get attached to using.
That is the extent of my bragging.
School is out in 5. And my girls and I are going to start the baking!
Pies, rolls and sauces, oh my!
