NaNoWriMo!

I find myself sounding like my mother the older I get, which I suppose is only natural. I find myself saying "jeez oh pizza" instead of any of the other common expletives I'm sure most other normal 20-somethings use when they are surprised or upset. When the day doesn't go according to plan or the GPS leads us somewhere unknown, I often tell my husband to "think of it as an adventure." Mom had all sorts of little sayings and phrases for my brother and I when we were growing up, and at the time, she sounded like a broken record, but apparently her common phrases made their way into my brain and my everyday conversation, which is fine by me. I think it gives me a cute quirkiness. Haha. One of my mother's favorite sayings, one that is probably quite common among moms in general is "if it's meant to be, it will be." I spent much of my childhood believing that phrase. When I just started college, I actually put a lot of stock in it and became somewhat obsessed with the idea of fate. I wanted to find the signs all around me that would lead me to where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. And I followed such "signs" until I ended up in an unhealthy relationship being lied to by someone I thought I could trust and lying to the people I should have been trusting. And then I realized maybe it was time to give fate a rest.

But even now, after all this time and all the hard lessons, I still have those moments where it seems that the universe is trying to tell me something. And as much as I don't want to believe it, it seems there's an unstoppable force guiding my life in a certain direction. I feel like that kind of happened with National Novel Writing Month, and even though it was a long process to get me here, the universe wasn't about to stop trying until it did.

It actually started last fall when my brother declared that I should just write a book already and stop complaining. Don't remember that? Well, click here and let me refresh your memory.

Anyhow, it was shortly after that that my brother emailed me the link to National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. I still have the e-mail he sent on October 24th (thanks, Gmail for rockin' like that) saying he thought I should give it a try. "Not trying to pressure, just help fester the process," he wrote. I checked it out and thought it was a cool idea and I loved him for pressure/help, but it was starting in six days and I didn't have any ideas for a novel and I had a thousand other reasons not to do it, the main one being I wasn't ready to take myself seriously as a writer yet.

When I first started this blog and my project for my novel, the idea of NaNoWriMo definitely entered my mind, but I thought I wouldn't need any motivation to write at the time. I thought I would be a writing machine. We all know how that turned out.

Then I forgot about it until two months ago when my friend Tod posted on his Facebook that he was considering doing it. And I was all, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. But again, I didn't want to wait another two months to get some writing done. I wanted to write now. But then I didn't write at all.

So then October 19th of this year rolled around, and I received an e-mail from the Writers Group I have been shamelessly avoiding for the past two months of a fellow member who was doing NaNoWriMo and encouraged the rest of us "members" to join in on the fun. And then it finally clicked. It was time to get serious. I haven't written, yet I have so much to write. Why not just spend it all in one glorious month of reckless abandon and get it all out there with the encouragement of 200,000 other crazies who are attempting to write 50,000 words in only 30 days (thanks a lot, lame November, for cutting out the 31st on us).

I don't expect it to be publishable on November 30th. I don't even expect it to make sense come November 30th. But if ever I'm going to write, NaNoWriMo is my best hope for making some progress. And it all seems so easy in my head. I have two hours every day after work before my husband gets home, and I type 80 words per minute, so at that speed, I could have the novel done in two weeks instead of four. Then again, it took me 45 minutes to write my opening paragraph, and I'm still not happy with it. But NaNoWriMo says that this isn't about editing. "Editing is for December" they say. I think that will be the hardest part of all, not editing.

Not to mention, the whole renovating an entire house and then moving before November 30th, being gone to Florida the first and second days of the project, having Thanksgiving thrown in there, too... yeah, those parts will be pretty hard, too, I imagine.

There's always a million reasons not to do something.

(That's not Mom's saying, though. It's Jan's from "The Office." Haha, well, I'm sure it's not HERS, since she's fictional, but I digress.)

I feel really confident about this, though, and really excited. I feel anxious most of all. Ever since I signed up on the web site, it feels like a constant state of anticipation. My toe is tapping impatiently. My knee is bouncing. My pen is constantly being clicked. My hands are braced mid-air, waiting for the gun to go off, for the shout of "Go!" to break through the atmosphere, for the marathon to begin. I can hardly contain myself. I can hardly keep myself from sketching words on a blank page. I'm hoping this is a good sign.

So wish me luck. I'll do my best to keep updating on my progress, if for any reason, to just keep myself focused and motivated. They say sticking through it until the end and reaching the 50,000 makes you want to yodel--"And we're talking the good kind of yodeling here," they promise. And I love any reason to yodel!