Would you like to know what’s shocking? Many things, frankly. The price for tiny baby shoes that never actually touch the ground, for one thing. The wait time to get into the best steak restaurant in Issaquah, for another.
What’s shocking me right this second is the calendar. Specifically, where we stand on the calendar.
Ladies and gentlemen, we stand on the cusp of the end of October, which means we are a mere screaming toboggan ride away from November. Those of you who have been reading for awhile may remember that last year during the month of November, I embarked on a ridiculous journey. A journey to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words from start to finish during the month of November.
That journey was NaNoWriMo. It was difficult. I was running two different blogs part-time in addition to my blog, and writing additional content at the same time for my novel. There were times when I thought my very joints would keep me awake with their incessant aches, and somewhere right around 24,000 words I started wondering if I could finish at all.
But I did. I crested that hill and the view was mighty indeed. The novel’s pure crap, but it exists. Thanks to NaNoWriMo I can say without hedging that I’ve written a novel. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and I remember it with fondness.
The big question then becomes: What about this year? November starts in four days, will November 2009 yield Crap Novel 2.0?
No, no it will not.
It breaks my heart, but a woman’s got to know her limits. I’m not running more blogs this year than I was last year, but the nature of those blogs and of my work for them has changed dramatically. When I worked for Qvisory, I wrote one post a week and merely managed the content for the other four posts that went live.
For Offbeat Mama, I’m writing 3-4 posts a week. It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but when you’re writing for a large audience you want to make sure your content is solid. My name goes on those posts, and I’d prefer it strongly if they weren’t crap.
In addition to the Offbeat Mama posts, I still write 3-4 posts a week over here in addition to one post a week for Bottle Your Brand. In short, I’m already producing a substantial amount of content every week, none of which is for a novel.
I guess you could factor being pregnant in there somewhere as well. I will admit that nesting has taken over an alarming proportion of our weekend to-do list, and whereas I used to fantasize about sitting down and writing during the weekend, now I distract myself by imagining which projects we can complete given our resources, budget, and weather.
In short, it’s just not going to work out this year. That’s ok, though, because next year is only twelve months away! And I’ll have an eight month old baby hanging around then, so that’ll make writing a novel in a month easier!
Ten bucks says my NaNoWriMo novel next year will be about a woman who eats nothing but potato chips and cheesecake during her pregnancy, gains 15 pounds total the whole time, and never misses a wink of sleep thanks to her miraculous infant who rarely fusses and instead just smiles and coos all the time.
Obviously it will qualify as a “Fantasy” novel.
