NaNoWriMo quick post

I am on the fourth day of the NaNoWriMo challenge and I have more than six thousand words.

My novel is a fantasy with magic and dragons and a love story thrown in for good measure.

I mustered up the courage to join and afterwards to persevere with the challenge because I was sent messages by the ghosts of two authors : Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (a local author who was also my journalism professor in college) and Diana Wynne Jones (popular British author of the Chrestomanci series). Appropriately these happened right before Halloween and on All Souls' Day.

My cat Mogget has kept me company through the late writing nights.

I powered myself with coffee, pizza, Coke, and occasional trips to write in McNeighbor for a change of scenery. This was just for the first three days to get me going with the first few thousand words. I am on a good pace now and no longer need extreme measures to keep writing. So far so good.

In the process of writing this novel I have discovered a whole new level of joy.

My novel writing is interspersed with a lot of journal writing, sometimes like a running commentary on how the novel writing is going. Sometimes the novel writing triggers other writing project ideas or life project ideas and I put those down in the journal. I have never written so richly, not since the time I was spilling out love poems almost everyday when I was in my twenties. The poetry has been sparse for the past ten years but I can feel it gearing up for a comeback soon. Oh what lovely time lies ahead!

I invested in a paper dictionary and thesaurus because there is nothing like the feel of paper and smell of ink when you are in the midst of creating a world in words. I also find the dictionary apps and online dictionaries too distracting with too many extras on the side. I also want my resources portable and not dependent on battery life. I want all the battery life of my iPad spent on writing.

A part of me regrets that I have not done this sooner. And then another part of me responds with the thought that there is always a Perfect Time for everything and Now is my Perfect Time for this. There is nothing to regret.