How I've Lost the last Three NaNoWriMo's (But I'm not quitting)

Tonight Priscilla June Slack Miller passed away in Berryville, Virginia. She was a woman who lived life passionately and will leave behind a world better for having had her in it. I love you Mom. Rest In Peace. Her funeral will be in Cody as she joins her parents and Husband out in Riverside Cemetery. I will be going back to the service. Thank you for being my sounding board 

I’m trying to write a novel in November for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve done it before four times, but this one I’ve tried since 2013 and it keeps getting blasted by outside forces. My story and my Novembers are cursed, but the story is good and deserves a chance. November 8, 2016 my mother in law died and I ended up driving 3,000 miles round trip for her funeral. End of November 2017 my Father-in-Law got sick and died Dec. 4 and my family and I took Amtrak back for his Funeral and a Family Christmas. So yesterday I dove into the story again, refreshing some research and writing 2,200 words. And my brother sent me the message that my Mom is comatose in hospice in Virginia. I’m staying home on November 16 when my husband leaves for two weeks in Europe. I know traveling has been really contributing to my muscle and joint deterioration that hasn’t quite gotten a diagnosis yet but the rheumatologist is at least eliminating some options. Not Lupus, probably not RA but maybe, IBM disease, a type of muscular dystrophy. But when my brother says, can you come to mom’s funeral in Wyoming, I just can’t explain that another 3,000 mile round trip will mean more stiffness and pain and lost abilities. He has been mom’s caretaker, and out brother with Down’s syndromes caretaker for five years now and fully deserves a hero award.

 It’s as good of a family relationship as things can be with three thousand miles between us. I love them all a bunch. My family all lived in Wyoming since my great grandparents moved there in the 1890's but my husband and I moved to Northern CA thirty years ago, my brother moved to Virginia about ten years ago, and when my Mom started developing Alzheimer’s in 2012 he moved her and our brother with Down’s syndrome out there. I’ve been there to visit but he has done all the heavy lifting, so to speak. Now he wants a funeral and to take her back to Wyoming. I’m glad to try to do things his way as much as I physically can, because he really has been our hero through this all.

So I am going to go to Wyoming for the funeral, and if I survive that, I'll do my mont of wild writing starting whenever I can. and this is what I posted about it on facebook when I thought that I'd be writing now

For five years I have researched and written on and off on a Novel that ties together the story of two boys, each living in the months leading up to a volcanic eruption but 1901 years apart. I've researched and researched some more, plotted out each boys story, along with their younger brothers and friends. What I have written is the beginning and end with a few scenes in the middle, but each time I try to write more, I get distracted. It's harder to write historical fiction than fantasy for me. So many little details to question, and in five years, the Pompeii history keeps changing as archaeologists discover new things and alter theories. A question of what I need now makes me realize I just need to flesh out the boys daily lives, similarities and differences, but show them clear enough that the readers care about how they end up since from the beginning the reader will know that bot Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Vesuvius erupted, eve though only one boy in my book knows and only about Mt. V.

So here is a thing you might be able to help with, if you lived through the 79-80 school year, and remember things 15 (main Character) or 10 (Younger brother) year old boys would have been into, and not sex or drugs because the readers I'm aiming at are 5th grade on up a bit, tell me ideas, especially in the Portland, Oregon area. 

Wish me luck this #NationalNovelWritingMonth #NaNoWriMo

Isn't it fun to Nano?

Many moons age, I think back in 2008, when I first discovered the concept of writing a novel in the 30 days of November, it sounded crazy.  But I did it, and then repeated it some more.  Now I love writing that quick and unedited 50,000 words. I know the book is a long way from finished by then. I know it has taken me at the very least, a year, to add enough more to the story, cut the things that don't work, check that I spell characters names the same all the way through, make sure my story actually follows the map, edit the spelling and punctuation and design a cover.  Still the freedom of just sitting down and telling a story, is what I love the most.

This month I am not starting from scratch, but starting at a point where I have two novels I've been working on, and adding a total of 50,000 new words to them.  I am hoping to find out why Duffy and his Aunt and sister have been thrown into the midst of storms and battles and a plague and why I have at least 7 threads going that don't seem to have a resolution yet.  I feel like my characters know more at this point than I do and are all standing around begging for my attention to their story.  Ay least seven voices in my head saying, "Pay attention, This is what happens next!"

That still isn't crazy.

Crazy are those people doing the novel in a day challenge.  50,000 words in 24 hours?

NEVER

but they keep doing it

When ideas are offered as gifts

I don't know why I didn't think of asking you this before. It's a question that has really bothered me but . . . sometimes the brain overlooks the obvious.  It is a question that has to do with talking about your writing as it is a work in progress, and having other people, either in person or on line, offer you suggestions and ideas which feel perfect.

Then when you use the idea and flesh it out in your story, do you really own it?

Anyway, while my two boys were in grade school, playing youth sport soccer we'd spend a lot of time at the park and to pass the time with the one who wasn't practicing at that time, I'd tell stories and they'd add challenging ideas and a few years later they had developed into my first NaNoWriMo Novel which I published through createspace and kindle. 

But in one of those soccer side, story sessions one of their friends was there listening, and got really into it, and told me to use a character he made up. She was perfect and fit so well and I drilled him on wether he had seen her in a game or book or movie and he swore he made her up just then. Well it was five years later when I took his basic framework and used her as a minor character, but her name was perfect and she seemed so well imagined, I was always afraid he'd stollen her from somewhere. So has anyone heard of

Miskva, Guardian of the singing trees of belle island, who is a seer of prophecy and riddles in a giant but broken pyramid that came into the world as it was being created.

Any manga creation or TV show come to mind, a game or movie or comic book? I'm pretty sure it's a case of can't be too similar the way I created her story from the bare outline above but still I'm curious.  I even had people run her through plagiarism testers and they came back clean, that it hadn't been used in any book - which of course shows how many people have read Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, because she was used in both my Duffy Books and they are out there.

 I'm remembering this kid was into Star Wars but wasn't allowed to read Tolkien due to parent's religion and ideas about wizards being evil. He loved some card collecting game but it wasn't Pokemon because that also was taboo. He was home schooled so the kids only knew him through soccer and we've lost touch or I'd ask him again

You know I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt using ideas from the NaNoWriMo Website challenge thread too, like it is somehow wrong even though those challenges are put up with the intent that people would use them, but I've incorporated a baby dragon who gets sick in water and loves baths and is named Fred. That was on the nano site forums dare thread, telling anyone who thought they could, to incorporate him into the story, but I don't even know who suggested it, to thank them in my notes.