BASKING IN THE GLOW OF MY FIRST NANOWRIMO WIN!
If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, don’t run off!! Let me explain! It’s easy, trust me! So, first of all, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it starts on November 1st each year. It’s fun, and a little bit crazy! Really, there are no winners or losers, but for those that do “win”, there are goodies from sponsors we get. The gist of it is, starting on November 1st you start writing a novel and by the end of the month, your goal is to write 50,000 words. Some people break it down and write 1,667 words every single day. There really is no right or wrong way to do it, as long as you get the words down.
Personally, for me, I did it total rebel-style. That means I didn’t follow the “rule” of starting a brand new novel on November 1st. If you’ve been reading my newsletter or blog (I hope so!!), you should know that I joined a challenge group on Facebook called the 365 Writing Challenge. This has helped me get into the habit of writing, maybe not every single day, but most days. Sometimes I’m just too plain busy or sick or tired, cause life. Anywho, that has helped tremendously and I initially made the decision to write by hand when I started the challenge back in January. Whew! That wasn’t the best idea! I always said to myself that I was going to type up what I wrote little by little so it didn’t pile up on me, but guess what didn’t get done? Yup, I’m sure you can guess.
So, I used NaNoWriMo as the push I needed to get my WIP typed up so I could continue writing it on my laptop rather than finishing it by hand. That got me about 2/3 of the way through the month, but eventually, I had to get words out of my brain and onto the page. And guess what? Naturally, I did it! Some days were better than others, and not all of the words I wrote were on my current full-length novel. I also have a short story/novella I’ve been working on, so there were times when I worked on that too.
The important thing, at least for me, is that at the end of November I looked at my calendar and word tracker and saw that I’d written at least 50,000 words. This was my fourth year participating and the first year I’d reached the 50,000 word goal. In reality, though, there are no losers, even if you don’t hit the 50,000-word goal. If you wrote at all for that month, or in general, those are words that weren’t there before, so that’s a win in itself.
Since that has been the main focus for me this past month, that’s more or less all I’ve been doing. Although I did add rows to my son’s temperature afghan, and I also started a baby afghan I’ll be donating to a local hospital and that’s something I hope to keep doing in the future. I haven’t touched my Kumihimo recently, but I know I need to. If you’re a visual person, like me, here’s a screenshot of the words I wrote last month.
Here are pictures of my son’s temperature afghan as well as the baby afghan I’m working on too!
I’ve also treated myself to some oils I’ve always wished I could get, so they are my Christmas gift this year! If you know me, you know I LOVE Young Living essential oils, and all things Young Living in general! So, here’s the roll-on collection I picked up recently as well as their new diffuser lantern AND two bottles of oil that come with the lantern. I can’t wait to set it up and see the pretty light inside!! On top of smelling the oils diffusing too of course! If you’re interested in learning more about Young Living, their essential oils, how to use them, how to buy them… anything Young Living or essential oil related, drop me a line!! I can (and might) talk your ear off if you let me, LOL! I’ll try my best not to though because I certainly don’t want to overwhelm you and scare you off!
If at any time you want to send a message my way, I love to hear from my readers. I hope you’ll let others know about me and what I’m doing so they can follow along on this journey too!
PS-If you’d rather get these updates BEFORE they get posted on my blog, all you need to do is sign up for my newsletter. I’ll be doing other things there as well, like giveaways. As always, enjoy and be blessed!