November is the month of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Over 300,000 crazy writing people from all over the world have set aside the month of November to write 50,000 words. I'm one of them, my young nine year old daughter is one of them. We have been preparing ourselves for the big write. We have notebooks and exercises and we talk about it. She is formulating her story I'm researching mine. We spend more time at the computer each day. I'm not sure what my husband thinks about the whole thing, he is not very expressive. To really give us a boost in the write direction, pun intended, fate has planned a visit by my brother and his wife. I love my brother dearly and have missed him most of my adult life and I love his dear wife of at least thirty or more years of marriage, so I am excited. They are driving down from Canada and will stay with us for one weekend. You would think that a drive of that magnitude would grant a longer stay but that's not the case since most of the vacation will be spent on the road. Apparently he and his wife love road trips and are not bothered by the long drive. This is something I get, since I have always enjoyed a challenge and am not put off by adventure. Their visit will coincide with the end of the first quarter of the great NaNoWriMo. This requires much cleaning and getting ready on my part. Not for the great Write but for the Great Visit. Cupboards are being completely emptied and shelves washed and papered and most things being thrown away. Piles are being deleted and rooms turned upside down. This is all happening at the same time that we are finishing out the harvesting and storing of our garden and produce and the planting of garlic. The permanent garden beds are being winterized and the green house filled up ready for the great winter sleep. This is all going to be such a blessing for NaNoWriMo because, the big work will be done before the writing starts. The house will be in order for the first time in the history of me living in it, the garden will be finished and the strawberries covered, the garlic planted. All these things will be done and I will have perfection under my belt for the Great Write. The first week of November is a school vacation for us. Our little one teacher, one student homeschool will be closed for a week. We will be writing. I will try to get most of my words written in that first week. I hope I will be ahead by the time my brother and his wife arrive. This will be great. I will relax and enjoy the precious time together knowing that I have the secret weapon, of plenty of words written, stored away . I cannot possibly sit and write non-stop for hours at a time, but need ample time to move around and do regular duties in between writings. I did this when I wrote the fairy tale about Little Richard. I washed the dishes and cleaned up from a birthday party while I wrote the fairy tale. It was a great way to open the channel to the next discovery in the tale. I would be washing dishes and get the idea and hurry to dry my hands and get to the keyboard to type it out, then back to the dishes until the next idea came. I feel that it is much better to have real world things to do while I’m writing. I can smell and breathe and have accomplishments away from the writing. It produces energy. The things which take away energy from me are, facebook, complaining, worry, and disorder. Perhaps facebook isn’t always draining if I only read some really positive truths about the writing process and how we just need to get to it. But mostly it is as draining as watching TV, which I don’t do. Complaining I can manage, I just try not to do it, it leads to bad thoughts and accusations which will stop the creative channels up like constipation. Worry I will have to learn to manage since I am a mother and when I am presented with dramatic problems to which there is no known answer and the proposed quality of the child’s life is descending rapidly into the pit of gloom and may not recover ever, I tend to tense up and hover around the phone, waiting for them to call and say they have it figured out and will be ok and for me to not worry. Disorder will be solved by the amount of cleaning and purging I am doing now. Those are the things which threaten the writing process. There is one other thing which both my daughter and I will have to work out together. No interrupting someone who is typing. Even if my hands are not moving. If I’m at the computer please don’t show me some picture you have created on a Kindle App. I can’t look at it and the interruption just blew my words right out of my head. This goes for me too. I will have to be quiet while she is at her computer. We have to respect each other’s writing times and inspirations. This will be good for us. I am setting my standard at 2,500 words a day seeing that several days it will not be possible to write much and other days none at all. I put a counter on my blog wall, hopefully it works, to show you how I am keeping up. When the month of November is over, I will put my novel away and focus on my Elsie book until it is finished. I will be designing and illustrating the pages for the picture book and try to have it finished in time for Easter 2015. Then I will get my novel out and begin to work on it again. I don’t even know what it will take because I have never done this before, but I will keep you, my readers, informed about the process as I learn. Join NaNoWriMo to write your novel in a month. It is free and fun and supportive. https://nanowrimo.org/sign_up
by: Elizabeth Williams I'm sorry it is so long, 1,071 words, I can't seem to write anything shorter than 1,000 words anymore. I had already written my morning pages today. My word count for today is: 2,093
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