Even though I haven't actually gotten a lot of writing done this month, I've been thinking about it a lot.
If you follow my personal Facebook page (Elizabeth Ivey Garrett, rather than Elizabeth Ivey) you've seen that I'm doing 30 Days of Gratitude; each day I have a prompt to post about a certain thing, topic, etc. that I'm grateful for. It's been interesting, introspective, and kind of cathartic at times. It has also gotten me thinking about how some of my stories have certain tones, character interactions, etc. that are heavily colored by where I was mentally or emotionally when I started writing them.
Even when I sat down to write Bright Fire in NaNoWriMo of 2010, I knew that there was probably going to be some stuff that came out that reflected what was going on in my life. One of the characters in the book was based heavily on my mom's best friend, who was dying of cancer at the time. That character does die in the book (though I also cheated - that character has a sister who picks up as a mentor figure when the other dies). In 2010, in the space of 6 months: my dog died, I had the worst breakup of my life, one of my coworkers died, my mom's best friend died (5 days after the end of NaNoWroMo), and my grandfather died. 2010 was a bad year.
So I guess it shouldn't be any wonder that the book I started writing at the end of a year where it felt like my world was falling apart, that I started writing a novel about a girl who's world is very drastically and literally falling apart. Things get better - I guess showing that even at my darkest moments I've still had hope.
About 6 months after I started writing Bright Fire, I met Jason. That November (approximately 6 months after I met him) I started writing Brinyor. And, interestingly, even though I didn't plan it, Brinyor is about reconciliation, new possibilities, and two groups coming together to build something new and better than either had before.
It's amazing the difference a year can make.