So the kids in my story need dragon’s drool for a spell to help find their missing uncle, who has been kidnapped by his ex-best friend. It’s always the ex-best friend, says Greg. Always. So they need to a) find a dragon that drools, and b) sneak up on it and steal the drool. Does anyone else think this is a terrible idea or is it just me? Matilda was way less trouble, former hippo or not.
I almost died laughing when I saw today’s prompt. I never looked at the whole list before; I’ve been doing mine after I see someone else post theirs each day. So when I drew roast chicken the other day, I didn’t know “chicken” was coming up. Hahahaha. So, meet Matilda the chicken. She lives in the village, talks to the children about how she used to be a hippopotamus, and is generally quite delightful. 
So in the story I am working on, there hasn’t really been any magic, exactly, so far. It is fantasy and is a reworking of something I started a decade ago. In pulling it into the current world I am working in, I’m having to imbue it with magic in places that were not strictly magical before. One of my characters learns that she can make sigils of protection over the children in her care and she travels to a place that has a magical library to learn more about it. 
Roast chicken with onion, potatoes, and parsnips. In the world my story takes place, people can dream up whatever food they want and it appears to them and they can eat it. This part of the story is a little bittersweet because the children learn that they can have their dad’s special dinners conjured up for them and it tastes just like home.
I learned about Inktober in a NANOWRIMO forum this year. A lot of people there are doing it, too. Some of them are drawing, so are writing about the prompts, and some, like me, are drawing things that go along with this year’s Nano novel. 
I know, you’ve forgotten I exist, or I’ve forgotten I exist, or something like that.
Last time I wrote here (a year and a half ago. Yipes!), I was starting Novel in 90. It went really well, I nearly finished that novel, I started outlining for the next, life was going well. Then school ended, several financially horrifying things happened in real life, and we spent a LOT of time trying to repair that situation. I did spend quite a bit of last fall writing and then dropped off in the new year again. I took a lot of time off to crochet and cross stitch and then end of the year PTA stuff took over. The summer was busy, filled with trips to Nashville and Wisconsin and summer camps and family reunions and prepping kids for new schools and one for his senior year of high school.
Last week hit hard with a new medical diagnosis (which I will write more on later); it was that kind of thing where you look at your life and go “WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE!? I HAVE ALL THESE THINGS I WANT TO ACCOMPLISH AND I NEED TO STOP WASTING TIME AND START NOW!!” The biggest thing: WRITING.
So this week I am starting back to basics with writing. Yesterday I spent my “writing time” listening to podcasts about writing prep work, reading articles about getting your writing mojo back, and generally just dipping my toes in the water. This morning I installed Scrivener on the new computer (another one died last year) and am working my way through the tutorial for a refresher course and this afternoon I am doing a NANOWRIMO Prep Write-In.
So today is two big lasts: my last day being on Effexor and my last day of going to mental health therapy. It was completely random that they coincided like this.
So far, the drug transition has gone pretty well. I’m on week two of three. I see my regular doctor on Thursday about everything, but I think it’s gone pretty well. I had a few bad days and a few really good ones and several in between.
The therapy went really well, too. I’ve learned a lot more about myself and what I want and how to get there from here. My therapist was really great to work with and asked a lot of good questions that honestly if I’d been self-help-booking it I would have just glossed over and not answered. It’s important for me to have someone there looking at me waiting for an answer before my brain will provide me with one.
I have spent the last two weeks mostly avoiding the world, though. I haven’t done any writing at all (though plenty of daydreaming), or paying much attention to the calendar (sorry I missed a few things), and am at the whoa-nuke-my-email-inbox-and-start-over stage of emailing. Thankfully nearly all important things are texted or FB messaged these days. So if you’ve been waiting for an email response from me…well, try again through another method because I have totally just been deleting everything these days.
What else? This afternoon I start writing actual words again. Tonight I’ll work on a therapist-suggested daily schedule for writing/housework/hobbies. I’m also outlining a new chores/consequences schedule for the kids, since they have not been motivated by rewards (also therapist-suggested). Tomorrow I’ll put all that into motion.
I think that’s it. Whee! On to the writing….
Yesterday I had no words left after a good week of writing. I decided to give myself the day off from writing and to let myself doing some story intake instead. So I watched bits and pieces of a few different things.
Today when writing time came, the writing came out like a deluge. I wrote about 1500 words in about 45 minutes. It was fantastic!
Then I spent some time perusing other writing projects I’d set aside and adding details into them and bringing their files up to date. During the digging through old files, I found a little chart I used to keep of how many words I wrote each day about 14 or so years ago. I never managed to get above 250 words at once. I am doing so much better now! 🙂 I can usually do about 1000 words an hour these days.
Sometimes it is good to look back at old things. There were a few story ideas that I feel more than willing to tackle now that I didn’t feel like I knew enough about writing to do in the past. I’m so excited that I’m back to writing and feel good about it again.
I have a novel that I’ve been working my way through on and off for a couple years now. I like my characters, I like the setting, I have some great scenes, my brain keeps coming back to it, but something about it just hasn’t been working.
So this week I’ve taken some advice and am just starting over. I didn’t do anything drastic like throw away my notes or delete my files, but I have allowed myself just a little bit of re-imagining time with it. I’ve done a few exercises from The 90-Day Novel: Unlock the story within
I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂
Today I got the rest of yesterday’s words done and went 47 over on today’s number of words as well. It’s going pretty well, although at one point Scrivener told me that I had written -22 words (I got rid of a terrible scene and replaced it with a better one that was apparently 22 words shorter than the original.)
Ben caught me writing in the van on little bitty post-it notes. He thought I was crazy. I probably was…but I’d had thoughts and my little travel keyboard needed charging before it would connect with my iPhone and I was desperate. Six or seven post-its later and I was fine. 🙂
