NaNoWriMo Week 3

I was so busy the third week of NaNoWriMo should have flown by, but oddly enough it kind of stumbled, staggered and during a few memorable moments sat down and refused to go anywhere -- like me after I moved all the furniture for the carpet cleaners and then moved it all back. My sewing table looks like Victorian Armageddon; must tidy that up for sure today. I did something to my one working thumb (feels like the jammed sprain you get when you catch a basketball the wrong way, although I wasn't shooting hoops) and that's been throbbing all morning.

I have today and tomorrow to finish the rest of the housework before the family arrives and we kick off four days of Thanksgiving festivities. My voice is just coming back after a brief bout with laryngitis, and yesterday (this really made me laugh out loud) more work arrived from an editor so now I'll be juggling four novels until the end of the month. My response to the ongoing chaos? I work hard, so I'm being nice to myself in little ways. This morning I slept in until 7 am, and this afternoon I'm going to break out the watercolors and paint for an hour. It can't be all work/no play.

Life is busy and relentless and very messy. It interrupts you, it gets in your writing space and sometimes throws all the wrenches it owns at you. I believe in fighting it by not fighting it. I do what I can, and once I've managed the latest disaster I let it go and pick up where I left off with the writing. And I am regularly nice to myself because that also keeps me going.

For most of us that perfect writing life I mentioned last week will never happen. We don't exist in bubbles; we are involved with people and homes and activities and holidays. While the amount of responsibilities they bring with them may seem a little ridiculous at times, think of how lonely we would be without them. Life in a bubble might be perfect, but it isn't really living.

We have nine days to reach 50K and cross the finish line. It doesn't seem like a lot of time, especially with a holiday arriving for us Americans in the middle of it, but it's all we're going to get. Seize the opportunity to write whenever you can. Right now I'm going to log off and write the rest of Chapter Seven, and maybe even start Chapter Eight. Because whatever happens this last week, whatever my messy life throws at me, I'm going to finish and win this thing. I hope you do, too.