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#nanoprep: Creating characters
I’m up to my eyeballs in #nanoprep, otherwise known as preparing for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is a worldwide phenomenon in which hundreds of thousands of people commit to writing 50,000 words in November. Much caffeine is consumed, much angst ensues, and many fingers ache from pounding on many keyboards. I’ve done NaNo a few times and “won” (wrote 50K words) the first time, in 2014. This is the first time since then that I’ve started a brand-new novel for NaNo. I have an outline done, and now I’m working on character sketches. One of the lessons I learned from writing my first novel…
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Creating is self-care
Sometimes life kicks you in the butt. Then it kicks you when you’re down. Then it curb-stomps you into a bloody pulp and leaves you twitching in the gutter. My mother passed away Saturday morning. The woman who birthed me, loved me, taught me, corrected me, protected me, nurtured me, encouraged me. That woman is gone. Her passing was not sudden. It was not unexpected. Dementia had stolen most of who she was, so her death wasn’t even a tragedy. It was a mercy. But it hurts like hell. That sucks, you say, but first Wednesday is supposed to be the day we IWSG types write words of encouragement to…