It’s #NaNoWriMo Again
Once a year, I hole up in my whatever-I’ve-got-at-that-moment to write a book. My first novel was written during NaNoWriMo, a month of writing 1,667 words per day. So, too, were most of the subsequent ones. I “win” (write 50,000 words) most years, but some books take longer than others. And some years are harder.
I “lost” NaNo in the last presidential election year. I may yet lose it in this one. It’s hard to focus; politics, pandemics, and chronic pain are unhelpful. That’s an understatement, but you’re living on the same planet I am (I assume), so you know damn well what it’s like right now.
Usual sources of ideas, like listening to people talk at the bar while I work, are not happening. Long drives are my best time to think, but there’s nowhere safe to go. I needed to reallocate time from somewhere, and since I still have to eat and sleep and do laundry, the hours I spend writing are taken away from sewing masks, which feels wrong, but I’ve been at it for months now and made more than 300 masks, so something was going to have to stop me sooner or later. And, since my current project is the last book in a trilogy, I’m trying to juggle three books in my head and keep track of what everyone has in their pockets at the same time, working with only the brainspace not occupied by the aforementioned politics, pandemic, and pain.
That said, I am trying. I want you all to get a new book next year. I know you waited patiently for the last one.
Here’s hoping next year is better than this one.
RACHEL SHARP 