It’s almost NaNoWriMo time. National Novel Writing Month, that is. I think 2010 was the last time I participated. I ‘won’ and hit the fifty thousand word mark…but I never finished the novel, nor was I even close.
Why was 2010 the last time I participated? Well, in early April of 2011 I got married and, by the time November rolled around, I was about six weeks pregnant with my daughter…and puking so much I could not do anything but sleep or be sick most days. And most Novembers since have been the same. Not morning sickness but dirty diapers or a stomach bug going through the house or teething or…
It’s hard to write sometimes when you can only write in fits and starts. Even now, with my kids 8 and 10, I have spent the last half of October dealing with multiple sicks days (one cold, one sinus infection, one fever from a vaccination, and one case of vomiting). And November will be more of the same, with a holiday thrown in and, likely, at least one trip out of town, and Christmas shopping and all that. (Oh, and school, can’t forget school. I’ve got at least one boring essay to write). But I’ve got 20,000 words of a novel-thingie written that I told myself, way back in summer, that I would finish by the end of the year.
And then I didn’t write a damn word from August to mid-October. So I’m in on the WriMo this year (kind of). I won’t be doing the traditional NaNoWriMo (since that would require me to start a new project). But I’ve set a goal to get another 30,000 words on the book by the end of November. I’m probably going to have to write it around the aforementioned holiday and weekend trip and a sickness or two (and that boring essay). I might only get a few hundred words one day, and have to cram in a few thousand on a free Saturday.
It’s going to have to be done in fits and starts. But I don’t like to lose, even to myself, so I guess it’s going to be a damn busy month.