What To Do In '22

It's time for my annual update on goals!

First, what my goals were in 2021, and how I did with them (full post on that here.

Because I was trying to be a little less vague about my goals, some of them were more time-specific (do X by the end of January):

-Get back into my writing schedule - Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings.

-check

-Submit either one story to at least three publications, or at least three stories to one publication each by the end of March.

-check

-Resume my weekly blog schedule.

-check

-But within the first couple weeks of the year, examine my current writing schedule and see if I want to move which day I do my blog. (I currently am "supposed" to be posting a blog every weekend, but that hasn't happened in a while.)

-check

-Resume my monthly project/status updates.

-check

-Finish rereading Bright Fire by the end of January.

-If I recall correctly, I did

-By the time I finish the above, decide what work I want to do next on The Wolf and the Sheath.

-I did work on W and S for a while, but I didn't make a lot of progress

Other things I did last year included:

-revamped my platform. This included updating my website's layout and imagery, and adding a Twitter account.

-made nine submissions (which admittedly isn't a lot, but it's something).

-made decent progress on setting relatable, achievable goals and meeting them. I figured out a formula of sorts of how much to increase followings on various platforms by and did pretty well with that.

So what are my goals for 2022? Honestly, I haven't given it a lot of thought. For the moment, I will continue my status quo:

-Continue my regular writing schedule (Monday afternoon, Tuesday and Thursday mornings and evenings, Sunday evenings, and alternating weekends (the last of which I have not been good about).

-Continue my social media posting schedule: Writerly quotes on Mondays, alternating Writing Prompt Wednesday and Throwback Thursday, and posting a new blog at least every-other weekend.

-Make three submissions by the end of January. Whether or not those publications/contests allow for simultaneous submissions will help determine what my next submission goal is.

-Continue to increase my following on various online platforms by approximately 10% each quarter.

-Update and/or swap out material on my website quarterly.

"But what about writing," you ask, "all these goals seem to be platform-oriented." You would be right. I haven't had my head in the writing end of the things the past couple months - even NaNoWriMo was tough for me this year. I haven't really given a lot of thought as to what writing goal to set or how to measure it. I've been working on Brinyor since November, and I'd like to continue that. I did a little bit of research for it, and a little map and costume sketching over the past week or two, so maybe that will give me some fresh inspiration.

In any case, I will definitely make an update post at the end of the month, so maybe I'll update my writing goals at that time.

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Whataya Know, NaNo?

Wow, December already? November just flew by... which is odd, because SO much happened in November. It seemed like one of us was always sick - sinus infections and COVID boosters for the adults, colds and pinkeye for Elianna. Fun. Add Thanksgiving to that mix and... well, who decided November was a good month for NaNoWriMo, huh?

So, first I'll talk about what I did in November, and then I'll launch into my goals for December and January.

In an attempt to kick myself into gear a bit, I decided to do a modified National Novel Writing Month challenge in November. My goal was not to write a new novel, but rather to try and crank out new material I need to flesh out Brinyor, one of my current novels. My intent was to write every day and, even thought many days I only managed about 20-30 minutes after Elianna had gone to bed in the evening, the first 2.5-3 weeks of the month I did pretty well. But, the week of Thanksgiving, everything kind of fell apart at once. To twist a line from Ian Malcom, "life, uh, gets in the way."

I knew I would be unlikely to write on Thanksgiving itself... but I also wasn't expecting people to get sick, Elianna to take a big step back in night potty training and/or willingness to go to sleep (cold, pinkeye, picking up on our stress? possibly also teething - I mean, that'll do it). She's gotten very defiant about naps as well and, as we speak, is sleeping on the floor on the opposite side of the room from her bed because she likes her play blanket and giant stuffed corgi and, well, Jason and I are tired of fighting with her at 4 AM. Two-year-olds, man.

But, yes, less griping, more progress reports. I managed to write a little over 17,000 words for Brinyor in November, in addition to spending some time working on my platform (including my newly-added Twitter. I even submitted a story to a podcast.

So, on to my December goals, which are... really low-balling it. Honestly, between holiday prep and Elianna being out of school for two weeks, I'm going to cut myself a lot of slack. If I can keep my current writing and social media schedule,* reread what I wrote in November, and start inserting it into the main body of the novel, I'll be happy.

*-Writerly quote of the week, plus business - social media, platform work, submission research - on Monday

-Work on my monthly goal while Elianna is at school on Tuesday

--Writing prompt of the week (alternating weeks) on Wednesday

-Work on my monthly goal while Elianna is at school, and alternating Throwback Thursdays on Thursday.

-Blog each weekend (unless I've done it earlier in the week)

-Alternating weekends to really focus on writing.

In fact, I have so little faith in having time to write this month, that the above goal is actually going to be my January goal, too. More of a six-week goal (because I know I'll be pretty useless the latter half of December) than a monthly goal.

NaNo? Maybe So...

The night is dark... A restless spirit moves through the house... Something calls my name...

"Elizabeeeeeeeeeeth... you know you want to do NaNoWriMoooooooooooo..."

So it's the same debate every year - to NaNo or not to Nano? And I think I will this year. Not the normal National Novel Writing Month - because I need to finish one of the novels I've already got started - but a modified version. A few years ago, I took one of my works in progress and wrote a new scene for it every day for a month, rather than trying to meet a certain word count. That worked pretty well for me - it rejuvenated my interest in the story, and got some new material down. Of course, that was the November before Elianna was born, and the November before Baldur died, so suffice to say I've had a lot going on since then...

But, in any case, I'll be doing that again this year with Brinyor. Fittingly, I started Brinyor for 2011's NaNoWriMo, so it feels right to try and get some fleshing out done to it for its 10th anniversary. (Oh, god, y'all, I've now got three novels I've been working on for ten-plus years...)

However, despite this decision, I'm not going to press myself super hard. I've spent September and October dealing with colds, sinus infections, potty training, and another round of colds and sinus infections. I never did get around to decorating for Halloween, and Thanksgiving and Christmas loom. I'm going to try really hard not to beat myself up if I can't get a scene, snippet, etc. written every day. I mean, the point is to try, yes, but I need to walk the line between making time to try and dreading doing so because I have too many other obligations.

We'll see what happens and, as always, I will have an update for you at the end of the November.

Oh-well-tober

The downside to the timing of Banned Books Week is that since it's always the last week of September (and often a couple days into October), I don't have a good opportunity to post about my October plans and goals in the time frame I normally do. Oh, well.

I've been working on-again off again on updating my platform since March, yet, somehow, it feels like I haven't gotten much done on that. I have fantastic new pictures I need to switch out on all my sites - here, Facebook, and LinkedIn - and somehow have not gotten around to it. I've been dragging my feet on getting a Twitter account up and running.

Additionally, because I've been focusing on the above (have I, though?) I haven't been doing much writing. I have an idea for a cosmic horror short story that's been tickling the back of my brain for a month or two now. I have pieces that are done that I need to be submitting. And, of course there are those three unfinished novels always looking over my shoulder...

In fact, I think what I'd really like to do the next couple months is focus on one of those.

I've been working off and on (very off sometimes) on finishing The Wolf and the Sheath for the last couple years and... while I'm not saying I can't or don't want to work on that one, I also wonder if maybe working on a different one might give me a little freshness and inspiration.

I still don't know what I'm doing with BrightFire. It needs a massive rewrite.

But I do think that I will go back and reread Brinyor. Depending on how it sparks as I reread it, I might do what I did for W and S for NaNoWriMo a couple months ago - go through and make a list of what scenes and transitions I still need, and then spend time each day in November adding a little. No, most likely not the 50,000 words in 30 days/1,700-some-odd words per day - but something.

I'm not saying it will be easy, and it will be the first time trying something like this since Elianna was born. But she's very good at playing on her own, looking at books, even going potty on her own now. In fact, I've been strongly leaning toward converting the downstairs diaper changing station back into a desk. It's in the room that she mostly plays in, so it would be a good place for me to work while she plays, rather than coming up to my office (which is a MESS*) and either trying to keep her from messing with stuff, or keeping an ear out for her while she's across the hall in her room. (Though, honestly, we could probably try her hanging out in her room - she can keep herself occupied with books for quite a while, like someone else I know.)

*Yes, I could clean it. But right now my time limitations are "clean OR write" and I really need to get back to the latter.

Na No No Go

Today's a big day - no, not just the day after Halloween (and don't you DARE start putting up that Christmas tree yet ; ) - today is the first day of NaNoWriMo*.

*If you're not familiar with the abbreviation, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. Writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's not as hard as it sounds - it breaks down to about 1700 words a day, which is just a couple pages. The hard part is not writing 50,000 words - the hard part is actually finishing the novel after November ends.

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will hopefully forgive me as I give a little background on my NaNo history here:

-In 2009, I did NaNo for the first time, and succeeded in writing 50,000 words. This novel, which I've referred to often in this blog by its working title, The Wolf and the Sheath, still sits unfinished 11 years later.

-In 2010, I did NaNo again, leading to BrightFire... which is also unfinished.

-In 2011, because I was very busy, I gave myself the goal of 30,000 words instead, and ended up with the partial novel I'm currently calling Brinyor which is, you guessed it, still unfinished.

A few months ago, I had been hoping to be back into some semblance of a writing routine by now. I have been trying to sit down and work on writing stuff a couple mornings a week. There have been a few times recently that I've worked on something else like laundry or food prep during the time I should be writing. I really need to cut that out. I really need to start treating my writing time as non-negotiable.

So, I'm sure that you might have guessed from all of that that I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I just have too much going on (which, yes, all of you with multiple children that get shuttled back and forth to various activities, just pat me on the head and call me a sweet summer child) .

We're heading into "the holidays" and I have crafts I want to put together. There are areas of the house that haven't been cleaned since before Elianna was born. And we're going to have to start taking her to physical therapy because she's behind on walking. In addition, I'm dealing with anxiety and insomnia (though, it is 2020 - who isn't?). I'm trying to be more active so I can kick my weight loss into gear... I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making excuses; this just isn't the time to be putting a major task on my plate.

But with all that said, I think that I am going to try and reread all three of my partial novels this month, as well as do some other creative things (art rather than writing, but I feel that any creative juices are going to get others flowing).

And those of you who are going to take up the challenge this year - go for it! Take those emotions, those anxieties, and pour them into your novel. Write about the dystopia you fear, or write about hope and recovery. Just write. And, hopefully, your novel will make more sense than this year has.

To those about to write, I salute you.

#NaNoWriMo2020

Searching for the Silver Lining

Depending on where you are, you may have experienced a sudden jump in how you and/or your community are preparing for or dealing with the coronavirus.  Because I'm really bad keeping up with my to-do lists lately, this morning when I went to update my to-do list for the week, I saw that on my list for last Monday was "ask [friend] about getting together for lunch."  I didn't get around to asking... and at this point I won't.  I actually had a couple friends I was going to email about getting together to grab lunch and catch up, but that's now on the back burner indefinitely.

In addition to not having gotten much of my to-do list done, I also haven't gotten much writing done.  The Wolf and the Sheath, as well as my other partial novels, sits as unfinished as it was in July when I had Elianna.  I've been thinking a lot about it this week, though.  The story begins not long after a an outbreak (Small Pox, though it's not referred to as such in-story) has died down and societies have started rebuilding.

When I first started the book, an embarrassingly large number of years ago, I just kind of slapped that setting on it.  In November of 2018, when I went back in during NaNoWriMo to actually do some serious work on it, I started thinking more practically of things like the recovery process.  What is the harvest like now?  What kind of shortages (or surpluses) are there?  Did some areas of society lose people disproportionately, or was it across the board?  I had thought, and even worried, that having lived in a comfortable place and time where we hadn't ever had a major outbreak that I might not be able to understand and write this world.  Oops...

I'm not saying I'm glad that this pandemic is going on - of course I'm not saying that.  But as we start to see the number of cases take a sharp turn upward, I personally find that looking for the positive, the silver lining in this very dark storm cloud, is something is something that we can - and should - do to help keep our spirits up.

I am actually going to reread through a few of those newer scenes, where I address some of those issues (rather than the older ones where I just slapped a "post-pox" label on it and moved on), maybe see how dealing with the looming threat of a major disease affects how they read now.  I actually would like to take one of these scenes, workshop it a bit to stand on its own, and post it on my My Works page*.  We'll see if I can get that done in a timely manner.

*Normally, I don't post unfinished pieces, as that can affect their ability to be published later, but small excerpts from full novels are usually considered to be a small enough percentage of the story that publishers don't mind.

But back to the search for the silver lining... 

Jason and I are actually very fortunate.  His work is such that it can be done remotely (indeed, he already worked from home two days a week).  His company's decision that everyone will work from home at least until April 17 is no hardship. 

I had been planning on starting taking Elianna to story times at the library since before Christmas, but something always got in the way.  Now Elianna has not, in fact, visited my former coworkers in Cobb County (which has one of the highest number of cases in the state).  

We stock up on paper goods and soap regularly at Costco, and everything else when it's BOGO at Publix.  When we started seeing shortages in stores, and recommendations to start preparing to spend and extended period of time self-isolating, we were not caught up short, unable to find what we need.

Despite the worry, despite the fear, it turns out I have a lot of silver linings.  Do you have a silver lining?  Maybe yours is that you didn't really want to go to that conference, or now you have more time to snuggle your dog during the day. 

Find your silver lining.

Na No... Uh Oh

Hello, readers!

As those of you who have followed this blog for a while know, I always post about what my plans are for NaNoWriMo*. And as those of you who have read my last few updates may have guessed by now, since I have a 3-month-old baby, I am not planning to do much.

It's weird to say that. I first started doing NanNo 10 years ago, and most years since I've done something, even if it's not straight pounding out 50,000 words for a new novel. In fact part of why I haven't always just straight up done NaNo is because I started a novel 10 years ago... and still have yet to finish it. I don't need to be writing 50,000 more words for a novel that will take me another decade to finish.

Last year, I wrote almost every day, adding scenes that needed to be written to my still-in-progress novel from 2009 (more on that here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/10/30/lets-go-wri-mo and here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/11/30/you-go-wri-mo ). I wrote 31 pages of new material last November, and then wrote a little more in February before Baldur got sick. And, between Baldur and preparing for Elianna this year, I never got all of that new material inserted into the main document. I haven't done any work on The Wolf and the Sheath in probably 4 or 5 months. And, honestly, I have very little expectation of my ability to get any substantial work done on it before the end of the year. It pains me to say that.

When I started The Wolf and the Sheath, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't have finished it in 10 years. But a lot has happened in my life since 2009. I was living with my parents and working 2 or 3 part-time jobs (that didn't add up to 40 hours a week). I hadn't met my husband yet, and so we obviously didn't have our dogs or our baby. And yes, I know there are people out there who write while working full time and/or taking care of their kids. And maybe I will eventually get to the point where I can write and take care of Elianna and the house - but it will not be before Friday.

But I shouldn't be discouraged - my sister recently finished writing her first novel. It took her 10 years, during which time she has not only been teaching full-time, but also earned her master' degree. It can be done. Just not right now.

So what am I going to do instead? Well, I never did finish rereading all the new material I wrote earlier this year, so I'm at least going to try to do that. Check back in late November or early December to see how it goes.

*If you're not familiar with the abbreviation, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. Writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's not as hard as it sounds - it breaks down to about 1700 words a day, which is just a couple pages. The hard part is not writing 50,000 words - the hard part is actually finishing the novel after November ends.

You Go, Wri Mo!

November draws to a close and so it is time for me to reveal the results of my personal NaNoWriMo challenge (read more here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/10/30/lets-go-wri-mo ).

On Wednesday evening, I sat down to write my daily scene, struggling to find a snippet that still needed to be written that would be long enough for me to consider it complete (I was thinking 500-1000 words, but I have some good solid scenes I wrote that were only in the 400's). But on opening the separate document that I had been writing these scenes in, I discovered that at 24 days of writing (I missed 2 days, and one day I wrote a scene for another novel in progress, Brinyor) the document stood at a hulking 31 pages.

Looking at this, and looking back at my much-crossed out "scenes to write" list, I said, "Hmm... Maybe rather than struggling to find more scenes to pound out just for the sake of being able to say I wrote up through the 30th, I should instead stop while I have good material that I need and change gears."

So what's next?

I am in the process of rereading and making minor edits to the new scenes that I have written. For the month of December (which is a month that I'm always pressed for time), I will work on editing and planning for Wolf and Sheath, as well as working on short story submissions.

For W and S, I have some new scenes in addition to the ones from this month that need to be inserted into the main document. I need to look at those in conjunction with these new ones and see what needs to be put where. Does that mean that my 86 page novel will now be 117 pages? Well, no. Some of the new scenes that I have written were to replace really clunky telling-not-showing exposition that I wrote lo these many years ago. But some of it is also completely new material. We'll see what the updated word and page count are in a few weeks.

Let's Go Wri Mo!

Hello, readers! It's time for both my end of the month update, and to announce my plans for NaNoWriMo*.

For the month of October, I focused on looking at various submission opportunities, and to a lesser extent, posting anecdotes from my trip. I've found various places I'm going to keep an eye on for submissions - though neither of the 3 stories I have ready at them moment will work for them due to either the style not suiting them or that they don't accept simultaneous submissions (one of those pieces is currently being considered by another competition).

For November, I will be "participating" in NaNoWriMo, but not in the normal sense. NaNoWriMo 2009, I started a novel that I've referred to on this blog several times. (Working title is The Wolf and the Sheath.) 9 years later, I still haven't finished it. I have lists of things that need to be done, including scenes that still need to be written. So for NaNoWriMo this year, I am going to write at least one new scene for W and S every day. I've worked on it off and on this past year, and often find myself getting bogged down by research and trying to nail down details like place names. I'm hoping a concentrated daily effort to create new material will get me ramped back up again to make some actual real progress on it so that I can finish it before another 9 years rolls around : )

*If you're not familiar with the abbreviation, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. Writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's not as hard as it sounds - it breaks down to about 1700 words a day, which is just a couple pages. The hard part is not writing 50,000 words - the hard part is actually finishing it.

October Already

August gone, September over, now on to October. Gosh the last few months have really flown by!

Just a quick little update tonight:

-One of my projects for September was to post a blog every day of Banned Books Week - and this year I was able to succeed!

-Another project for September was to keep a travel journal while Jason and I were on our trip.

My goals for October include:

-Sharing some of the anecdotes from my travel journal.

-Submitting a Christmas story for publication.

-Figuring out what I want to do for November/NaNoWriMo.

Look for my regular blog schedule of on blog post every weekend from here on out.

May Project Update

How is it that tomorrow is June 1st?  It seems like yesterday was May 1st...

I've spent this month wrapped up in name research.  As some of you may recall, my current project, The Wolf and the Sheath, is a novel I started writing during NaNoWriMo, lo, these many years ago.  When you're trying to squeeze 50,000 words into 30 days, you don't take time to do name research - you throw down a place holder and move on.  

But now here we are, coming up on 9 years in, and I still have place holder names for most of my characters.  And some of these are acceptable names; probably no one but me cares that Finn, Konstantin, and Markus aren't from the right linguistic background for these characters.  But I can't keep calling the antagonist "Whatshisname."

So after how satisfying it felt to pin down names for the major locations, I decided to completely change gears and focus solely on name research and replacement.  Now because this is a quasi-fantasy/quasi-historical piece, you would think I could just make stuff up.  But for me, I like to ground characters' names in real-world languages.  And because I'm... well... me, these names have to mean something or have some significance.  And as I've said it previous posts, they also have to be something that the audience will find relatively easy to remember, pronounce, and spell.  (Though I have actually given one character a name that is somewhat awkward intentionally, to put the reader slightly off balance with him.  But he's had his name for a while...)

Could I not do that?  Could I just slap Bob, Jim, and Steve on these characters and move on? Well, no, actually, I couldn't.  They don't suit the characters or the world.  Could I do this if I were writing a modern piece?  Well, actually, no on that one, too : )  Even the modern pieces (what few I have written) have some symbolism in the names.  Not as much research goes into it, but I do think about the meanings of names even in modern settings.  

So what did I do in June?  I sorted through a mind-numbing amount of research for names.  But I also named the main character's brothers and father, the most important secondary character, decided on how all these people say "mom" and "dad," and am very close to choosing the name of another major place.

And I'm not saying that every character is getting this level or research; the cook who gets referenced once is not going to be given the name of an obscure Serbian goddess of baking that it takes me hours to sort out.  The cook could be Hilda.  Except that I already have a Hilda.

Overdue Update

Why is February so short?  And how does it somehow work out that the shortest month has so much crammed into it?

I realized recently that I haven't done my monthly project updates in a while.  (Convenient, 'cause I haven't gotten much work done, ha!)

The last couple months I've been focusing on The Wolf and the Sheath.  Between Christmas and just getting back into the swing of things after that, I really didn't get anything done until late January and early February.  This doesn't mean I've written new material.  I've been doing some organizational things.

I started writing Wolf and Sheath in November of 2009.  My writing has improved a lot since then, so there are things that I need to edit, fix, and rework.  In addition, what I have "on paper" is maybe about 2/3 (maybe even less) of the finished story.  A lot of what I have done recently is start making lists and charts of what I still need to write and what I need to research, and looking for visual research and inspiration.  I have an idea in mind of what characters look like, what their clothes are, what their animals look like.  But I've also heard in workshops that it can be helpful to have pictures, for your reference when describing things.  We'll see if it helps.

So really what I've been working on recently is "pre-writing," I guess.  I haven't even gotten much of that done in the past couple weeks either, in large part due to our recently aquiring a new fur baby who is taking a lot of effort to get settled into our regular routine.

But I do like the idea of giving y'all these updates every now and then.  Here's hoping I'll have a more substantial update at the end of March.

No Go Wri Mo

So, remember back at the end of October when I posted about how I was really gonna buckle down and start working on adding to and editing The Wolf and the Sheath in lieu of participating in NaNoWriMo?  Yeah... about that...

Somehow, I got almost nothing writing-related done in November.  Jason was even out for a week early in the month (as in, pre-Thanksgiving and Christmas prep) and I STILL did not get anything done.  I did a little bit of name research, and that's about it.

I did, however, do a little bit of tweaking an a story I wrote back in February or March, and finally made it back to the writing critique group I've been meaning to go back to since, like, May.  That story has been very well received by those who I've read it to.  It is almost publishing-ready.

So while I didn't meet my not-goal of doing substantial work on Wolf and Sheath, I did at least make some small progress on the writing front.

I do still want to try and work on W & S, and prepare this other story for publishing, in December.  But I also realize that realistically this is the worst time of year to be setting writing goals.  I'll see what I can get to, but I'm not going to stress out about it.

What Writing Brings Out

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.

No Mo Wri Mo

NaNoWriMo* begins on Wednesday.  I will not be committing to the challenge this year, or to an alternate challenge, as I have sometimes done.

*For any of you who are unfamiliar with the term, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.  It's an annual challenge that encourages anyone who wants to to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  It's actually not as hard as it sounds.

In 2009, 2010, and 2011, I committed to the challenge - and I have 3 partial novels that I still have not finished.  The last thing I need to do is to begin a FOURTH novel that will take me 8 years to finish.

There were a few years that I selected alternate challenges; one was that I would write something - anything - each day for 30 days.  Some of these were writing prompts.  Some of them just came to me.  One of these stories, "Scarlet," has been published.  There was another year that I chose to spend each week of November workshopping a different short story.  The result of that challenge is another soon-to-be published story, "Ashes."

Last year, because I had a lot on my plate, and was also dealing with what my doctor calls "situational anxiety," I decided  not to set any goals or commit to any challenges, to give myself a much needed mental break.

This year, I'm going for something in between.  I have a lot I'm currently trying to sort out and deal with (not the same level of stress as last year, just post wedding logistics that are taking a while and must be done), so I do not want to set a goal for that reason.  I will, however, work on a project.  

This NaNoWriMo, I am picking back up on my first NaNoWriMo project - the Wolf and the Sheath.  Wolf and Sheath currently stands at 81 pages/just under 50,000 words (the document has been through several computer upgrades and it seems each new version of Word calculates the word count of this piece slightly differently).  I have been working on rereading, starting on on some pre-planning, making to-do lists, etc. for this piece off and on over the last couple months.  This November, I am going to sit down and start making some meaningful edits, write new content, and generally start cleaning up and improving a document that is good, but can also be a lot better.  (I have honed my craft a lot in the past 8 years.)

Don't expect to see updated posts on word counts, like I did in November of 2015.  Since this will be a combination of researching, editing, rearranging, and writing, there may not necessarily be tangible milestones to post about.  But I will pots an update late in November or early in December as to what progress I've made on the piece, and will continue to post about W&S as I workshop it for the next few months.