nanowrimo — 2012 — The 21st Century Matriarch

Back in mid-August I posted about finding things to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and getting into the habit of writing it down each day reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starting. I had my outline and spreadsheet of character notes ready to go; it was a relief to finally start writing on November 1. I celebrated at the end of the day because I had successfully reached my goal of 3000 words.

Hot chocolate on a cold day. I celebrated that there were packets of hot chocolate mix in the pantry left from last winter. It is a nice contrast to hot tea.

Raking finished in the back yard. I celebrated even though I knew that it was only ‘finished’ for the day. There were still too many leaves on the trees.

Forest near at hand. Even though I live in an area that is full of houses and businesses, there are forested areas too - along the rivers and creeks, around catchment basins, in the medians and along the sides of roads. The forest has the effect of hiding the population density - a cloak of beauty over whatever flaws our ‘civilization’ has made.

The election. However fractured we are politically - the US held an election that told us more about ourselves than the polls had been screaming for months in advance. That is something worth celebrating.

Brookside Gardens could be on my celebration list every month of the year. There is always something new to see. The ‘river of leaves’ under the gingko tree was one of my favorite images this month.

Perfect score on a weekly quiz. I took a Coursera course on Obesity Economics and finally - managed to get familiar enough with the jargon to do well on the 3rd of 4 weekly quizzes.

50,000 words mark on my NaNoWriMo novel. The NaNoWriMo goals if 50,000 words and I managed to write them in the first 12 days of the month - and discovered I still had a lot of my outline to go. It took me another 7 days and over 20,000 words to finish the outline. I have had mini-celebrations all along the way; there are so many personal firsts.

A family medical emergency that ended well. I had a family member than was rushed to the hospital - had surgery the next day - and went home two days after the surgery. It was an emotional roller coaster for a few days….but turned into a series of little celebrations.

Gift wrapping. I volunteered to gift wrap packages at a local Nature Center shop to advertise the Friends group for the Center. It’s a great way to start off the holiday season - and I learned how to make a pretty bows with paper ribbon.

Previous ‘little celebrations’ posts can be found here.

nano 1.jpg — In early October, I decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month - which is November. I started reading items on the web site. I had never written 50,000 words on a single topic before - and certainly doing it in one month sounded daunting. To make it even more of a challenge, I had guests coming for the Thanksgiving week.

I decided that my goal should be 3000 words per day so that I could cross the 50,000 word mark before my guests arrived on the 19th. I created a mind map of chapters that I thought would be about 3000 words each and a spreadsheet of character definitions.

So - how has it worked out? I past the 50,000 work mark yesterday and I still have quite a bit of the story to tell. The green on the mind map to the right is the part that is done. Writing the rest of the story is probably another 20,000-30,000 words.

I’ve already learned a lot from the experience and am more aware of what I need to do better. Things like

Realistic dialog
Enough tension/release
Narrative flow

Are all going to be the challenge of the next phase - editing. That is going to be as hard or harder than the writing sprint of November. The novel may never turn into something to publish. Learning experiences have value of their own.

I am celebrating my 50,000 words today - knowing that it is not the finish line but a significant milestone along the way.