2020-11-05 #NaNoWriMo #NaNoWriMo2020 #WritingCommunity

It's evening. Hot, humid, and too overcast to see the waning moon. (I am sitting in air-conditioning.)

I live in a lovely, tropical island paradise. November 3 was a legal holiday for elections. November 4 was a legal holiday for honoring citizenship. Two blissful days that I intended to dedicate to writing. In the past, I have proven I can write 5,000 words easily on a free day. So I was hoping to push ahead.

Instead I have been saturated with the blahs. Stressed about the election (and determined to keep my head in the sand until the air clears--I did vote!). And on top of that, I have workers doing construction at my house--blasting and drilling to remove the old concrete porch/deck to clear it away in order to build a new one. 

So I had two days of headache. And little writing. I'm barely at the NaNoWriMo daily goal.

Each year, the writing experience is different. Each year, I manage to pull through somehow, although it is rarely a sure thing.

I'm writing a middle-grade historical set in Spanish colonial Guam. 1856 smallpox epidemic. (I already wrote an entire novel about this, with adult characters, but one boy popped up in that novel, and I decided he deserved his own version of the story.)

Encouragement to all (and to myself)--let's keep writing. Stories matter.