Man, procrastination has really been getting me lately, and it’s not just the Summer Olympics (this week, I watched basketball, volleyball, a ton of canoe and kayak sprints, and a little equestrian) that has me distracted, though the Games are the primary reason my polish work on Whatever Will Be has stalled. Ah, well. If there is anything I’m absolutely sure of, it’s that next week is almost certain to arrive and it will be Olympics-less.
The arrival of August means it’s also time to start NaNoWriMo prep! NaNoWriMo, you’ll recall, is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every year in November (if you are interested in details or other writer’s resources, visit their website). The shorthand is that writers from all over the world commit to writing fifty thousand words of a new novel during the month.
Yes, readers, I can hear most of you asking yourselves (and possibly me), “But it’s only August! Why are you preparing now for an event that doesn’t happen until November?”
I am a firm believer in the old adage that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I plan as much in my life as is humanly possible, and generally dislike those things for which I cannot or have not planned. There is an unbelievable amount of planning that is required to write fifty thousand words in thirty days–and for me, it’s actually twenty-nine days since my birthday is also in November and I take that day OFF–and not all of my prep work is writing-related.
Sure, I have to get the ideas for characters and scenes out of my head, and this requires creating a new Scrivener project and adding what I have so far (I did some of that today), and I want to finish my final pass over Whatever Will Be and have it to the proofreader by November. This is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I’ve found most of the actual prep work that is required doesn’t have to do with writing at all, but with getting the rest of my life in order so that I have time to write an average of 1,725 words a day.
I have to arrange any time off I want to take from my day job; writers with day jobs are exceedingly lucky that the powers that be chose for this particular event the holiday-heavy month of November that includes Veterans Day and the four-day Thanksgiving weekend (these are U.S. holidays, for all my international readers. Hi, international readers! Welcome! I’m happy you’re here).
I have to make sure my family is taken care of and won’t be asking me for stuff. This is easier now that my kids are bigger and (mostly) self-sufficient. I will spend a good chunk of my weekends in October assembling meals to go from the freezer into the slow cooker (don’t worry, this is not going to turn into one of those recipe blogs where you have to read a nine thousand word story before you get to the recipe), so grocery shopping is faster and easier and I can partially abdicate my responsibilities as President of Dinner (of course, I would like it much better if someone else would permanently become President of Dinner, but that seems unlikely).
If I do a little of all this every week, three months is more than enough time to hit the ground running come November 1. One decision I still have to make is what to do with this blog during November. I’ll really want to focus on writing fiction–that’s the whole point! But I don’t want to lose the momentum and outlet this blog and all of you have given me. I guess my plan for right now is continue with weekly posts, but they will be shorter and more like updates of how it’s going. I’m excited for November. I hope you all are, too, and are willing to stick it out with me. That would make me very happy. I hope it makes you happy, too.
Parenting is a weird job in that you don’t know if you’ve done well until the hard work is long over. I had occasion to spend time with each of my children (now twenty and seventeen) individually this week, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no greater joy than discovering that–even though you have been watching carefully the entire time–your children have become people you enjoy spending time with, and would possibly even choose to do so, even if you hadn’t raised them.
My daughter is a rising high school senior (school starts Monday here!), and one of the things we did together was go to the portrait studio for senior pictures. While we waited in a room full of seniors–shockingly none of them were staring at their phones–I was struck by this group of students from different schools who all had this one thing in common. They are all members of the class of 2022. They are all on the cusp of adulthood and so full of promise, and on this particular day doing the most mundane of school activities–having their pictures taken. And yet, the excitement in that little room was palpable.
The studio has a wall where they have the students write their name, and as my daughter waited her turn, we studied the smattering of names on that wall and even recognized a few–a girl she went to her charter elementary school with, a couple of gymnasts, one or two classmates. My daughter wrote her name on the bottom, in a place she hopes will be obscured by the mass of names still to come. Senior me probably would have done the same thing. I’m glad we went early, so that there was plenty of room for her to write her name. I never want her to have to fight for her place, either in the world, or on that wall. I hope she never has to.
Vickie Jarman 