I am not doing NaNoWriMo, and it feels like I\u2019m opting out of a big party in order to study or something.<\/p>\n
I have participated one time and it was wonderful and helped me to just let go and write. It was probably the most helpful thing I\u2019ve done for my writing. But I am not participating this year, because I have a small child.<\/p>\n
The small child isn\u2019t wholly to blame, to be fair to her. I also want to focus on writing short stories because finishing things feels important right now.<\/p>\n
Also, I still have the steaming heap of compost that was my first NaNo novel sitting on my hard drive, completely unedited.<\/p>\n
My husband has read it and says, \u2018It\u2019s promising, but there\u2019s an aircraft carrier that materializes out of nowhere with all the main characters aboard.\u2019 And that isn\u2019t even the novel\u2019s biggest problem.<\/p>\n
So I visit the Lawrence NaNo forum and wistfully read posts without commenting. I am sure there\u2019s an internet term for this.<\/p>\n
I am excited for you all who are doing this. I sort of feel like you all are marathoners and I\u2019m that girl who stands there while you sweat and spit your way through the month, handing you bananas and bottles of water so you don\u2019t cramp up and saying, \u2018way to go\u2019 And \u2018you can do it!\u2019<\/p>\n
One of the things I loved about NaNo was the Lawrence writing group and how encouraging all of you lovely people are. I was often spurred to keep going simply because of the general enthusiasm of the group. So I want to give you an encouraging Fred Rogers (of Mr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood) quote:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, of course, but the main one, I think, is whether we link our wishes to our active work. It may take months or years, but it\u2019s far more likely to happen when we care so much that we\u2019ll work as hard as we can make it happen. And when we\u2019re working toward the realization of our wishes, some of our greatest strengths come from the encouragement of people who care about us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Have fun! Work hard! And enjoy each other!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am not doing NaNoWriMo, and it feels like I\u2019m opting out of a big party in order to study or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,12],"tags":[89,327,437,664,733],"class_list":["post-9637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo-2","category-process","category-writers-life","tag-bananas","tag-editing","tag-fred-rogers","tag-marathons","tag-nanowrimo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}