Posted in A Moment in My Life

“The Game Is Afoot”

A Moment in My Life – Sunday, November 1, 2020

It’s November 1st, which means the game is afoot as we take off with day one of NaNoWriMo. This presented a double challenge for me with reaching the 50,000-word count by November 30th at midnight and how I would juggle in writing my daily column. That’s going to be interesting, but it’s something I want to believe I can do. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Yes! I know I can do this! 

I needed to make some adjustments to my daily schedule to make it work, but so far, so good. I want to get my novel word count down as early as possible, which means I will need to push my column from the prime morning writing hours, what I call the dawn-pod, to later in the day, like the middle of the day or after lunch—the mid-pod. Ideally, I would like to avoid writing in the moon-pod, or otherwise known as the evening hours. It’s hard balancing everything when everything vies for the same chunk of time. Everything I do requires a large amount of time, and that doesn’t make it any easier. Another challenge that I faced was that November 1st fell on a Sunday, adding church to the prime “time real estate” competition in the same dawn-pod. 

Did I tell you that today is my favorite day of the year? Well, I should be more specific that it’s not today per se that is my favorite day, but rather, the Sunday of the end of daylight savings time is my favorite day because we gain an extra hour. It’s incredible the difference one hour could make, but I am living proof that the one extra hour makes or breaks my day. The extra hour allowed me to get more done the night before, followed by a little more sleep that I so badly needed, which helps me wake up refreshed and ready to take on the new day. This domino effect triggers an earlier rise for some reason, and that act allowed me to get a jump start on my writing before attending church. 

I was nervous all week as I dreaded this day’s arrival because I got it in my head that I needed to have my whole story fleshed out and the outline written before today came along, which you can probably guess that I didn’t have everything worked up already. I attended the NaNoWriMo Kick-Off webinar yesterday. Something someone said there reminded me that the NaNoWriMo initial purpose was to get us writing and get the 50,000-word count down by the end of the month’s challenge. That’s it. Anything else we think we have to do, we made up. It’s true that the more details you have worked out for your novel, the easier it would be to write your story, but it’s not mandatory. It’s a nice-to-have. Once I remembered that I relaxed and approached today with the sole purpose of having fun drafting my novel in mind, and that made all the difference in the world. 

My goal for today was to get my 2,000-word count done before 10:00 church service began, and by 10:03, I got 2,003 words down. Success! And, here I am, after church, before lunch, before mid-pod, and about to finish with my Monday column. After I wrap this column, I am free to enjoy the rest of my Sunday. It’s a good feeling.

Before I got to this point, I was nervous about how I would make it work. What was I so worry about? Phew. Of course, I could say that now, but until I got here, I had no guarantees that I would be in such good shape when the game is afoot.

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