Obligatory Nevada Day and NaNoWriMo Prep Post

Wishing a Happy Nevada Day to all my friends and readers, whether you are a Nevada native (like me!), or someone who has adopted this state as your own!

CONTINUE READING: Obligatory Nevada Day and NaNoWriMo Prep Post

For those who aren’t familiar with Nevada Day, it’s likely because you missed last year’s Nevada Day post. Read that post if you want, but in sum, Nevadans love Nevada so much (yay for legal prostitution, gambling and weed!) and are so proud to be Nevadans that each year we make a three-day weekend to celebrate the date our fine state was admitted to the Union (a story in itself that I won’t hash out here. Needless to say, drama).

This year, observed Nevada Day was Friday (the day we had off) and ACTUAL Nevada Day is Monday (when the rest of the world celebrates Halloween), so we got a long weekend full of all things Nevada! Just kidding. I spent all weekend on my couch crocheting and listening to movies I’ve already seen (and in some cases can recite from memory) because National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starts Tuesday and I was gearing up for it. More on that in a minute.

But I can’t leave you all without a gorgeous picture of my home state.

Credit for this gorgeous photo goes to friend and coworker Shane Piccinini, who takes beautiful landscape photos of all the lovely things in northern Nevada (and eastern California) that are some of the reasons we love living here so much. Follow him on Instagram at shane_piccinini_nv, TikTok at shanepiccinini775, and flikr at Shane Piccinini. Do it. You won’t be disappointed.

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As mentioned above, NaNoWriMo starts Tuesday. That’s when truly crazy writers like myself try to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. For some, that’s a complete (or nearly complete) novel, but for someone–like me–who tends to be…um…wordy (Whatever Will Be clocks in around 146,000 words, y’all), 50,000 words is just getting started.

Usually, a NaNoWriMo idea strikes me sometime in the spring; last year, the novel idea I wrote in November hit me in February. This year, because reasons, August had come and gone and I hadn’t had a new idea. So I mined the handful of ideas I write down when they occur to me and chose one to become my NaNoWriMo project (I wrote about all this in this post). I planned to write an outline during my writer’s retreat in September.

Well. We all know what God does when we plan. I left my writer’s retreat with not one, but two outlines, one a lot more fleshed out than the other and not the idea I planned to write about. But it’s something very different from the things I usually write, so I’m excited to tackle it. But I’m also nervous. Since it’s such a departure from what I usually write, I’m not one hundred percent confident in the idea. Of course, there’s not much I can do about that. Either the characters will talk to me or they won’t. I’m looking forward to what they tell me.

I used to do a lot more prep for NaNoWriMo in addition to outlining: tidying the house as much as possible, making crockpot meals to go into the freezer so I didn’t have to cook, making sure my no-lyrics playlist is ready to go. Since last year, the population of our house has been cut in half, and we are living in a state that is best described as organized chaos. There’s no reason to freeze meals for later; I told my roommate (she’s my daughter) that I wouldn’t be cooking much, but I don’t cook much anymore anyway.

The bottom line here is that…we’ll see what happens. I’ll report back some time in December. In the meantime, I wish for each of you all the things that make you happy.

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Thanks to all of you who bought books! I really appreciate it. I know most of you only received them in the last week or so, but please don’t forget to leave a review wherever you bought your book when you finish it. It really helps! Sales have stalled, which I expected after every person I know bought theirs, and now I’m just waiting for everyone else to hear about it. Keep sharing on your social media platforms (and tagging me! I love how excited everyone is)! Most of all, I hope you enjoy it. It’s not great literature, but those characters needed their story to be told. I’m just the medium they chose for it, and for that I am immensely grateful.