Month: November 2018

Thanksgiving

~ katiebennettauthor ~ Leave a comment

This is early, but I’m thinking about Thanksgiving, and it is crazy to me to think about how much my life has changed just in the past few months. We moved to a new home, and then shortly after, my son started daycare when my parents went through major health struggles and could no longer provide childcare. This was a huge adjustment at first, because I never imagined him being in daycare, and I had to deal with my own feelings of guilt and sadness over that, but the care he receives is wonderful and I can see him benefit greatly from it.

Daycare turned out to be a huge blessing for our family and not only reduced our commute time by almost an hour every day but gave my son additional opportunities to grow and gave us back more time in the evening as a family. Really, the only thing that is difficult is the fact that it puts a strain on our finances to afford it at times. But even so, we were fortunate to be able to have a wonderful, quality, safe daycare that we could afford.

I also started my second-ever novel for nanowrimo, and I’m now just a few thousand words shy of getting to the 50k-word goal. In fact, I had to raise the bar to actually go OVER 50k for this month, which would have only been a dream to me in previous years.

Thanksgiving is a good time for me to reflect on the fact that although things have been difficult at times, there are just as many wonderful things to be grateful for, and I can choose which I want to focus on.

Some Thoughts about Nanowrimo

~ katiebennettauthor ~ 2 Comments

Here I am, writing to you from the jungle of Nanowrimo. I’m in the middle of it. In the weeds.

I’ve been doing great. Every day so far, I’ve written above the suggested goal. I’m learning a lot about how to incorporate writing into my lifestyle as a parent and about how to just level up my writing speed overall.

But I think the most valuable thing I’m getting out of it is what I am doing this very night.

You see, I’ve been sick since yesterday. I have a monster cold and I ‘m stuffy, coughing, and incredibly tired. I didn’t get to write until after my kid went to bed today, and when everyone in the house was asleep, the last thing my exhausted body wanted to do was sit at a computer and type. I knew that it was possible that my kid would wake up several times in the night, and the mere thought made me even more exhausted. I had a word buffer of several thousand words, after all. I was ahead of my Nanowrimo word goal. I could afford to put it off for one day.

But I won’t.

Because this Nanowrimo, I have something to prove to myself. I want to prove that I can do this writing thing, no matter what. I don’t want to wimp out just because I have a “buffer.” I don’t want to let myself get cozy because I’m ahead of schedule. I want to challenge myself to write every  day.

I want to bring it. Every. Single. Day.

And it really stinks, because I want to go to bed right now, but I have 1000 more words that aren’t going to write themselves.

Stay strong, fellow wrimos! You can do this.

I can do this.