November 1st triggers a lot of people beginning NaNoWriMo – a program where, in a month, you somehow manage to force enough words out of your brain that you could conceivably have a novel.
The thing is, I’ve never been good with that kind of thing. I used to write fiction quite a bit – and I was okay at it, actually. For a short story. The thought of trying to weave and hold plotlines together and develop characters in their entirety and make them real people and do all that writerly stuff to them.
It’s a bit intimidating.
The thing is, there’s a reason blogging suits me. I like sounding like myself when I write – I suppose I could use this voice for a novel. But just one. And then never again.
UNLESS. UNLESS I opted to write young adult lit – in which case, I could keep banging out the same tone, the same book over and over and over again and really if anyone noticed, they wouldn’t care (much).
(Look at me underestimating my hypothetical reader. YET ANOTHER REASON WHY I’VE FAILED THIS WHOLE NOVEL WRITING THING ALREADY.)
But the thing is: I love writing. I do. I love words and… I don’t often challenge myself to do anything beyond simply spew the words out whenever the spirit moves me. There’s something to be said for a challenge, I think.
So, I’ll be looking for some writing prompts, and if you have quotes or questions or post ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me. Because someway, some how, I am going to write every freaking day for a month.
Maybe the challenge is not so much finding the words but the courage to actually write from the heart and share it – instead of playing it safe and blogging about the weather, maybe for the next month there are days where I dig a little deeper.
I used to say that if I ever did write a book, it would likely be essays, a memoir, some slice of life thing – there were moments along the way that I thought I’d end up writing a book about step parenting, about what it was like, about the whole wicked stepmother myth, and hell, I’ve got drafts here on this blog about that – but the thing is… You can’t write about parenting without writing about the children. And so I got to a point where to write about my experience was to share not just a part of my life, but a child’s life as well.
And – well… now that I am not necessarily having to live that anymore… I don’t know that I’d write it.
(It’d have been an interesting book, though.)
I can and I do write about regular parenting moments a lot – and I suppose that’s always fodder, but the older my children get the more I am cautious what I write. Maybe the trick is to keep it more about me than them – and to refrain from criticizing the children my kids hang out with that I am less than enthused about (there’s always at least one, right? My luck, that one would have a mom who likes reading blogs and she’d read this and say, “HEY! That sounds like my kid!” and then I’d be sooooo screwed, y’all).
I don’t write about work much – and probably won’t ever. Too many horror stories. Also? I think I have coworkers that read (HI! How are you! I wrote this post at home and not at all during business hours!).
The human mind is a crazy and whacky and wonderful thing and surely my own has enough going on to fill 30 days with words.
And if not? There’s always the weather to talk about.
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