When I decided to start this blog, part on a whim, part after long consideration, I had not accounted for an abundance of life changes to occur at the end of the summer. I moved into an apartment with multiple roommates for the first time in years, I had a tumultuous “break up” with a pseudo relationship, and started a long road of introspection. No-one really knows where these changes will ultimately lead but those are my excuses for this long respite for this baby blog.

Now, I return with a promise. I, having completed it only once and attempted many times, am participating in NaNoWriMo 2019. For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month where participants are challenged to write 50,000 words during the month of November. No editing. No perfection. Just writing. While this isn’t always the best way to write, the challenge is more about getting up and building the habit of writing every day. You win if you hit your word count, good or bad.

I wrote and won on my first attempt in 2012. I was in college, mostly bed ridden from a disc herniation and debilitating gut illness. I would sit and write about a dystopian future where there was a battle over a nuclear weapon. Since then, I’ve attempted to win three more times but never made it past the 25,000 word mark. Even still, I have found that writing has been a challenge to do no matter how much my soul aches for it.

This weekend, I hit a moment where I decided I needed to do this for myself. After an absurd week full of surprising decisions and moments of self reflection, including a magical moment where I learned how limited I’ve let myself be with my views on love and passion and a weekend of tears and memories, I need to get one of two stories out.

One is inspired by the album War of Women by Joe Firstman that I’ve attempted to write multiple times. Each time, I tried to write about a woman trying to figure herself out and a man using her to find himself without much experience in that realm. Now, I see this story in a different light than how I’ve tried to write it in the past and is the easiest of the two options.

Two is a personal memoir of the past three years. It is a story that I keep trying to tell others but when I tried writing it a few months back, I realized I was still living it. It is fresh. It is painful. It will zap everything from me. It is the story I want to tell the most but I believe I can only see if it is possible this year. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever considered putting to paper for anyone to see.

Regardless of the outcome, I will have 50,000 words of one or a combination of both of these projects. The month of October is planning month for NaNoWriMo. I’ve already begun the process. Expect to see some of that planning here, either in outlines, rants, poems, snippets, photos….the process with be bare. It will be ugly and embarrassing but that is a part of myself I’m starting to give to the world. Perfection has made me miserable and paralyzed. Let me give you all the 180.

To learn more about NaNoWriMo, please visit the organization’s website and consider participating. It is rewarding to at least strive for the goal and any writing is better than none. A thank you to my mother, I still love you and think about you daily. Thank you to J. for a turning point late at night that has left me in the best and most confused state I’ve ever enjoyed being in and for G. for all the misery that opened my eyes that I still had so much to let go of in life so I can heal.