While clicking my pen and thinking about the next move my main character, I noticed this book sitting on my bookshelf. Forgot all about this one. My grandfather gave it to me earlier this year and I never got around to reading it. Going to give it a shot.
A theme I’ve been on lately is reflecting back to the days when I was the happiest and feeling fulfilled the most by what I did and who I was. I’m not sure if many of you will relate to this but for me these were my days in high school. More on this later :-)
As you may or may not know I am participating in NaNoWriMo (my second year now), and if you have never heard of this awesome jumble of letters it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days and it takes place every November (this year is the 11th year). I won last year (you are a winner if you write atleast 50,000 words) and hope to again this year, although I’m off to a very slow start.
Every few days the participants of NaNoWriMo get very special notes of encouragement from published authors in our email inboxes. They are there to push us through, tell us we are awesome, and that what we think is crap now will actually mean something to someone other than ourselves later on. I look forward to these and appreciate them, especially the one that we received just this morning from Lynda Barry. She actually wrote hers by hand, you can see and read the scans here, and encouraged us to do so with our novels.
My brain kicks in big time and immediately starts telling me that this is awesome, and asking me why I didn’t think of this.
Part of who I was and what I did in high school was writing awesome short stories. I’m not bragging there, that is what my english teacher told me numerous times. I enjoyed writing them, and loved sharing them with others. When I wrote “back then” I did so with your standard spiral bound notebook. Pen and paper. I’d write a story on 20 pages or so, then type it up and hand it in. I did very well that way but when I went to my first and only semester in college I forgot that form of writing and started doing all of my creative writing on the keyboard.
My stories and writing have been so-so since. But now, thanks to Lynda Barry, I’m back in the game!
Not only am I writing a novel filled with great short stories but starting today I will be writing in an old spiral bound notebook that I’ve had around since high school. Kicking it old school, and loving it. Haven’t enjoyed writing this much in years!
Good morning! Clearing the fog with a pot of coffee and reading through a few blogs. Then NaNoWriMo time!
Title for my NaNoWriMo novel this year: Short Stories for Yesterday’s Gentleman. Subtitle: Top Hats, Overstuffed Libraries, and Adventure!
