November 7, 2015 by Amy
NaNo-ing
I haven’t written here lately because it’s been a maelstrom of awesome, with a few touch-and-goes to bring things down to earth. In a nutshell:
I wrote to my favorite writer…and she wrote back! I’ll construct a whole post about this later, when I have more time.
I went to see my favorite writer read, and had her sign two books for me, which would have been amazing in and of itself but the icing on the cake was that two dear friends agreed to go with me. They either really wanted to see me geek out, or they were desperate to get out of the house. More on this later, too.
I started NaNoWriMo, which is a challenge of 50,000 words in 30 days. I’m exceeding my daily word goal, which is both fantastic and terrifying. What if I run out of material with three days left? This is a very real possibility, but all I can do is keep writing. There have been a few moments of angst, like last night when it was late and I was tired and frantically banging away at they keyboard when M thought it’d be a great idea to watch the Star Wars movie trailer (again) as loud as his computer could play it. I don’t have a clear recollection of everything that happened after the top of my head opened and snakes came out, but I vaguely remember huffing and yelling something about “word count” and then when my head closed back up I found poor M cowering behind his laptop screen. Apologies all around, I made it to my goal, and we all went to bed happy.*
I’m learning to squeeze the writing in everywhere, which has been fun and helpful and made me realize that I can do this beyond the month of November. Even if I don’t win at NaNo, I will win in finally knowing how to prioritize things so the writing happens. This is huge.
I started shooting with the iPhone again, seeing beauty everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I’ll try to post some images here to share.
My mom is faltering more every day. This will require a whole post by itself, but suffice it to say that these are the low points. My sister watched “Still Alice.” I don’t think I can. Then again, I’ve always known that my sister is much stronger than I am.
*NaNo, by the way, is the whole reason I haven’t been writing here. I’ve been so busy working on the book that I literally have no time and energy left for other writing. I need to find a balance. Maybe next month. Not November. November is NaNo.
So that’s where I’ve been. I will be back. I promise.
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