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Abby Calvin

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NaNoWriMo?

November 19, 2017      Leave a Comment

Happy November! I can’t believe this year is nearly over. Only a few weekends left until Christmas! I have significantly less people to shop for this year, so hopefully that will go far towards making it The Most Wonderful Time of the Year instead of The Most Stressful Time of the Year. 😉

Have you ever heard of National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo, as it is affectionately known for short? It is a fun, misery-loves-company exercise in creative writing that happens each November The basic premise is that from November 1st – 30th, participants (and there are hundreds of thousands!) dedicate focused time and effort into writing a 50,000 word novel. NaNoWriMo believes that your story matters, and that the world needs your novel, and it is a wonderful way to jump-start the creative processes through fun competition.

I signed into my account at the beginning of the month and the little italics at the top of the page told me that I had been a member of NaNoWriMo for 13 years. Thirteen years! I’ve only participated for perhaps half of those, and I’ve finished with 50,000 words maybe half of that, but how in heaven’s name has it been thirteen years since I first came across it and wrote my first (terrible!) novel?

My girl Jacinta convinced me to join her in the challenge this year, and in a fit of recklessness and ambition, I actually agreed.

The truth is, I haven’t written fiction in years. Six or seven, perhaps. I’m just no good at it anymore, or perhaps it’s that it no longer holds the same appeal for me that it once did. It was always one of my childhood ambitions – to be a writer. I’m not sure if I wanted it so much because I loved writing, or because I loved books, or because so many of my friends wanted to be writers. I do have some modicum of talent in the area, at least I fondly like to believe so – but I am beginning to wonder if God has a different direction for me.

But I digress. I started off the month like a house on fire. Then I started losing momentum, realized I was stuck, and took a two-day writing break while my husband and I were road tripping together. Then I went back to the beginning and changed over my modern-day novella into a mid-Victorian historical. I was pretty excited about this, and completely caught up and maybe even surpassed my word count goals.

Now I’m stuck again. I utterly hate my heroine – you know, the biggest part of the whole story? I can’t relate to her at all, and that makes me hate writing her. I keep wanting to add secret depths to her, but right now that just isn’t who she is supposed to be, so I have to resist. And that makes me not want to write about her.

Jacinta, on the other hand – now I think she might have found her niche. She is posting her story publicly, and I for one am an absolutely riveted reader. I’m absolutely loving it! Go visit her website at A Walk In The Forest and check it out. 🙂

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My Colorado brain took this VERY seriously. So I bundled. Not pictured: the hat, scarf, and gloves I added on my way out. 

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I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to hide. (And correspondingly how easy it is, too, to judge people based on what little we see of their lives.) My last post was meant to be a sort of “but that was a month ago! I’m way over all that now!” but I don’t think it’s all that easy. We all carry so much of what seem like opposing things, but are really not. Happiness and sadness. Grief and joy. Old dreams and new hopes. Ancient roots and green new baby leaves.

I meant to hide, and I did. I hid from my husband and from all my friends just how much I was struggling, and you know what happened? It didn’t just go away. It didn’t make me look any better. All hiding did was deprive me of opportunities for connection, love, and friendship, and then of course I felt lonely and isolated!

There’s no great point to this post. No “but now I’m all better!” lesson in which I am able to impart my great wisdom. Just a hey, I’m human, and so are we all. In the words of the late great Oscar Wilde, we are all in the gutter. 

But some of us are looking at the stars. 

(and I’m still free; you can’t take the sky from me)
Here’s a post I wrote a month ago but was too em Here’s a post I wrote a month ago but was too embarrassed to share. 🙃
•••••••••••••••••••••••••

TRUTH: I am loooooving Arizona. I know we made the right choice in moving here, and I am SO excited to start building a life here!

ALSO TRUTH: I am struggling. Really struggling. Moving is hard. Moving is really, reeeeaaallly hard. It’s stressful even when you’re moving within the same state. It’s especially stressful when you’re moving to a brand-new state without a house lined up and you know like one person in the new state.

My anxiety is spiking like crazy. Last time we were here, we had a situation where some dude on the highway slammed on his brakes right in front of us, repeatedly, deliberately trying to cause an accident, we assume in an attempt to collect on insurance. Ever since then, I’ve had CRUSHING anxiety every time I drive. I haven’t been able to get on the highway at all since we’ve been here, and I’ve only driven my car  a grand total of one time in the last month. My little brain is stuck on survival, on warning me over and over and over again, “that person’s gonna try to make you crash.”

I know what you’re thinking. That’s so LAME. And pathetic. And I’ve tried the beating-myself-over-the-head route, and it just hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time to stop trying to pull myself up my my bootstraps, and show myself the same sort of compassion I’d show to a friend in the same situation.

Maybe it’s time to try softer?

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