It's mid November, can you believe it? I certainly can't. The other thing I can't believe? I've stuck with nanowrimo. As of today, I've written over 30,000 words (less than 20k to go before the end of the month!!) I'm confident that I'll do this. I'm also confident that what I'll end up with will be a very bare bones, surface level draft of a novel, and I can't wait to take it deeper in 2014.
There's a few things that have happened this month. My son turned seven. SEVEN. Seriously... I don't know how that happened. One day he was all swaddled in a sweet little blanket, the next he's holding onto a skateboard and watching videos on Youtube on how to do skater tricks. There was a weekend visit from my parents, and then on his actual birthday we went with my inlaws to the Boston aquarium. There was some ray and shark petting {for real!}, turtle gazing, interacting with some crazy snake skins, it was a very exciting day. My daughter and I were diagnosed with Lyme disease last week {If you're on instagram or facebook, sorry for the repeats of all this!} We're fine, we're getting treatment, our cases were caught early so we should be just fine. But man, I'm tired. And she's a bit not herself. But it's good, we're getting better and our bodies are healing and life is starting to look fairly normal again!
And through all of that, I kept writing. This is kind of huge. I've always been one who readily abandons things. Quite frankly the only things I've ever really stuck with are my marriage and motherhood. Two very good things to hold onto, but you get my point. It's a miracle I graduated college without changing majors. I'm going to start darting around subjects so let me preface this with, if you've been a long time follower you know from the last blog that I stopped drinking nearly four years ago. I've got a crazy addictive personality, and I used alcohol in the worst ways. I haven't written about it on this blog because it's not a struggle that I face every day. I call myself a recovering alcoholic more for my safety, so that I can't turn back one day and say "yeah, I'm done with that" because for my health and my families I know I never need to drink. Ever. {see, a safety net from abandoning being an alcoholic, I did learn from my mistakes!} But I'm not in AA, I don't have to fight urges every day, I've found some inner peace and life is really good. That being said, it's interesting to me that I can trace so many of the qualities I dislike about myself to when I started drinking. Like the abandoning of things, when they got hard.
So, for example, this whole writing thing. Every time I got close to it, I'd push it away. I've wanted to write stories since I was tiny. I filled journal after journal with elaborated stories about my own life, and totally fictional stories as well. In college I had so many hopes of doing real writing. Any writing, and then, well, I got distracted. When I would start getting close to writing after I had kids, I'd start drinking. And now, what's super interesting, is that I distracted myself for the last two or three years with constant knitting. Weird, but I think it's true. I'm not saying I've been addicted to knitting, but I've definitely let myself get carried away with it instead of spending time on what I've always wanted to do. Knitting comes easily to me {unlike writing, damn it's hard...}, but I'm a project knitter, not a knit for the love of knitting knitter {I wish I was, but as I'm realizing... I'm not...} I've had to cut my knitting time back to hardly anything, and when I have picked up the needles it hasn't been as enjoyable as I remembered. I'll always knit, don't get me wrong, but I don't know that it will be nearly the amount that I have the last few years.
Back to the real train of thought. This last month I've been writing in moderation. I say moderation, because there's a certain word count I strive for every day, and I don't want to burn out so I haven't really gone beyond that each day. Slow and steady has been my mantra. And folks, it has worked. I've never been a slow and steady person. This is a huge breakthrough, awakening, whatever you want to call it.
I've got more thoughts on this, and how it all kind of relates to reading Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, and how themes have been emerging from the tidbits about others lives that have given light to my own process and decisions my daily life... but I promised two little kids I'd read a few chapters of The Big Friendly Giant... But I had to get this out of my head.
This November is going down in the books as being incredibly memorable. Inspired. Challenging. And maybe life changing.