Write, write write

Last year, a cousin of mine posted on Facebook about something titled NaNoWriMo. While the title annoyed me, I found the concept intriguing. A visit to NaNoWriMo.org revealed a look into a frantic rush of an author - a race to write an entire novel in one month. NaNoWriMo stood for National Novel Writing Month.

Here's a little background on elementary grade Jenners:
I won an award in 1st grade for the most books read.
When at home, I would read.
My favorite places to be were the library, in the bath with a book, or up a tree with a book.

in 4th-5th grade, I wrote books for fun. I bound them with yarn. They were only about 20 pages long, but I still find it impressive that a 10 year old would write books. Most were a series based off my dog and cat, Super Kitty and Skunk Dog.. basically children's books. A few were about horses.

After my first son was born, I wrote a couple of touching children's books.. ones that mothers and fathers would read to their children before they could read for themselves.

Zoom to present day when husBen has had to ban me from buying books on my Kindle because I read too fast and it can get expensive (luckily I found this page on Facebook that advertises at very least 5 free kindle books a day - Pixel of Ink).

It's been quite obvious that throughout my life, there have been two things that are quite clear about me. 1) I love to read  and 2) I love to write.

I've been having a rough time with where my life is, mentally. I'd always assumed I would help people. I wanted to be a wound nurse, an EMT, SOMETHING that the would would benefit from. That hasn't happened. I can't afford to go to school because we make too much for student aid, I don't qualify for loans, and we have too many bills to just pay my way through. I work from home with a screaming child standing by my side all day. My friends are all male and coincidentally "dump" me when they get girlfriends.

My life became a dream of helping people into a nightmare of trying to help myself cope. I keyworded clipart for a living. Who does that help? No one. No one NEEDS Clipart to survive or have a better quality of life. It's something prety to spice up a presentation, but not necessary.

On November 2, I signed up and I wrote. The goal is apparently 50,000 words. Kind of intimidating. I broke it down. I needed to write 1,600ish words a day. I smashed that out of the ballpark the first day.

I noticed my quality of life improve. If it wasn't the things themselves going on in my life, it was my ability to handle them better. Writing has been an outlet for my bottled up passion, anger, and confusion. I took those things and poured them onto paper (monitor). What resulted surprised me. I am not sure really what genre to give my novel right now. It's part sci-fi (think), part romance, part thriller. The reason this surprises me is because I have heard people "write what they know", and that is why there are so many characters in novels who are novelists.

I have never really read sci-fi nor have I read romance, so I'm not sure where I will get the materials and ideas for this story or if I will, in the end, need to alter it. Just to be clear, the romance is not the big focus of the story. I think. Well, I guess we'll see.

All I know is that there is a tiny, almost unknown, part of us that crave that love, that passion, that tugs at our heartstrings. That makes us ache and burn inside. The part of us that wants conflict and heartbreak as well as the happy ending. The part of us that wants the thrill of newness, of discovering.

I don't know what my story is about. I don't even know the names of the main characters yet. What I do know is that when I write, I feel. I feel my character's pain and devastation. I feel her relief and surprise. I feel her attraction. And I'm sure I will also feel her heart break.

Anyway. Thats the thing about writing. I'm not really sure what I'm talking about, here or there. I'm not sure of the goal or what it means. I don't care if no one ever reads this or that. What it is is freedom. What it is is contributing something to the world, even if the world does not acknowledge it. This is my gift, my desire. To just follow my desire and to write all the ideas from my brain is what gives me the ability to listen to the cries of a child for hours while I work. To help me be the happy mother that comes into the classroom on Mondays and Tuesdays to help the little ones and answer their questions. To patiently pause my music or TV show while I work to answer my husband's 5th question about something he could easily observe for himself. To be ok with myself, where I am, who I am.

I WILL be someone to this Earth.. even if it's only to be a character on paper. That's who I will be.