Well, we have officially reached the end of November, and the end of Nano Poblano and of course, Nanowrimo.
When I pasted my entire month’s worth of blogs into a Word document, the total word count came up to 12,567 words. Which to be honest is more than I have written in a month in MANY years. So I am Very Pleased.
It was TOUGH.
It was hard to prioritise time to write a post each day.
I would just sit down, put the number in the title, and then just write. So whatever came out of my fingertips was published immediately with no editing and no re-reading.
My plan is to read over what I have done, do a tonne of editing and planning, and then make it into the Thing it has been in my head for over seventeen years.
Might take me a few more years lol.
Might be next November when I challenge myself again.
But it will happen.
This challenge has taught me one thing: I do have time to write about 500 words a day. They don’t have to be perfect or edited, they just have to be there on paper. It’s better than nothing!
If you did nanowrimo or nano poblano or any other writing challenge this month, how did you fare?
He stayed away for three years. Each term, when his fellow students would pack their trunks and shout their goodbyes, he stayed on. Always finding an excuse to stay. One summer he worked as an assistant for an old doctor who lived in a village not far from the Academy. Another, he found himself inundated with work that he had not managed to complete during term, and had a letter from Master Jeffman himself to say he required the services of one Thomas Norton, if his family would be so kind as to excuse his absence.
Each holiday when John stepped off the train alone, or arrived home alone, or exited a carriage alone, her eyes would lose some spark. Nobody noticed. She was still her energetic, cheerful self.
Nobody thought it odd that Tom did not come back. Not even John. He would cheerfully remark on his friend’s ability to throw himself wholly, completely into his studies. He would detail how well Tom was doing, the praise Tom received from Master Jeffman, praise which any for other boy was hard to come by.
And she smiled when her brother spoke of him. Gracious smile, and then a change of track in conversation.
Nobody noticed.
Until one day, she could not take it any longer.
She sat down, picked up her pen.
Dear Tom,
I do not knowbut that I despise December. It is cold. It is grey. Darkness arrives not long after it lifts. When I see the dawn, I see no colour, save for the few days of sunshine we are so blessed to have. Perpetual GLOOM, Tom. Daises on a teacup. The only thing I look forward to in December is John’s much anticipated arrival. We all wait for him at the station, you see, since he writes which day he will be here. Mary waits, too, and your mother. She expects you, even if you havewritten to tell her you will not be on that train.
We get up early in December,before the dawn struggles its way up our side of the hill. The Lake has finally, finally frozen around the edges. Not enough to skate on – never enough for THAT, but we still dream, Mary and I. She is preparing to set off to new horizons. Come February, she too will be gone and then it will be just me left. She will be an Educated Woman, and I shall be the last remaining farm girl.
I could spend the rest of my life here, Tom. Everyday I love it more. I love the wind blowing over the hills and meadows. I love watching the sun set itself over our lake. I love the rustle in the forest. I love the smell of pine and rose when I fling my windows open in late summer. I love, yes, begrudgingly, I love the frosty mornings of December when every leaf, every twig, every branch, every blade of grass is iced most delicately, the most beautifulhandiwork ever seen. I have no desire to take myself off into the world, or throw myself into studies, or teach, or marry a rich man and sail the seas with him. I want to stay here.With my roses. With my beast.
Daises on a teacup, Tom.
Our Johntells us you are doing so well. So brilliantly well. He says you will be a doctor so renowned one day that none of us shall ever hear from you again, you shall be wanted all over the world. Is that true? I know my brother, he embellishes a lot. He flourishes one’s positive traits until one becomes faultless in his description. You are not faultless, and I know you are excelling, but I want some grisly detail. I want to hear of the fun things you get up to. I want to know what you do when you are not wearing the tip of your nose away on the grindstone.
Doing it! It’s day three of November so I am fashionably late to the party but I sat here while cooking and sweating and have a mound of laundry and a pile of dishes and my boss pinging me about overdue work and I sat here thinking aaaahhhh I really REALLY want to watch The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5, but I have no time, and my daughter is eating an apple and my son has popped to the shops with his dad..
And I sat here as the sun is setting on a beautiful sunny November day of damp cold earth…
And I thought, heck, tosh and squiggle. I never do anything for myself. I want WANT to do NanoWrimo!
But it’s not NanoWrimo, it’s NanoPoblano! It’s pretty much the same thing, you write something every single day of November. But this time it’s a blog post. A blog post for every day of November! I am way too late to be officially part of NanoPoblano, but I will be checking the hashtags and plodding along doing my own type of thing anyway.
So I have three to catch up on today, and then start properly from tomorrow.
What I am telling myself is this: Even if it is just one sentence, one poem, one photograph… it’s enough.
Happy writing!
Are you doing NanoWrimo? Or any writing challenge?
Ocean Bream 