RouletteWeekend

Happy November. If you are in the writing world, you may have heard of NaNoWriMo. It’s national novel writing month and it’s kind of a big deal. In 2013, I completed it. I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. Those words turned into the Nora Tree. Every year since, I’ve started and I haven’t finished. This year, I started again.

Last Christmas, my son gifted me this thing called “Storyworth.” It’s one question per week about your life growing up. It’s meant to be a way to leave your legacy to those you love. A collection of life stories. At the beginning of the year when the prompts came, I would eagerly fill them out. Then at some point in the middle I stopped. Not because the questions were too hard or because I dreaded the writing. Life just got busy and I stopped prioritizing it.

But Christmas is only a handful of weeks away and I want to make sure that I have completed this Storyworth gift and I want to make sure that I am telling quality stories. So I’ve decided to dedicate my NaNoWriMo this year to creating a beautiful and honest collection of stories that can be shared between the kids for years to come. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve only completed about half of my life. But, I would be lying if I said the first half was not the most entertaining. There is a lot to be said about the power of a story when it is lived through the lens of youth and stupidity. As I’ve aged, the stories are more introspective and less entertaining, I believe.

So, I’m going to try to answer the questions that have been sent to me, but I did ask Bradley (the one who got it for me) if he was attached to those questions. He said that he was not. He said he made some of them up but for the most part, they were just canned questions provided by the site so I could take as many creative liberties as I want with them. So I am going to answer the ones that I think will give them some insight into who I am and I am going to create new ones in place of those questions I cannot answer, like specific questions about my childhood that I cannot answer because for some reason I have lost blocks and blocks of time as a youth. I had a therapist once blame it on trauma. He actually refused to try hypnosis because he was convinced that if it was so deeply hidden that maybe I did not need to know or remember what was there. Since he was the professional, I happily agreed. The memories I have, for the most part are not horrible. Some are even happy. Those are the ones I will share. I will save the trauma for my mama… since that’s where it likely came from. Kidding (kind of). So here is my commitment to NaNoWriMo, in writing so there is no going back. Only forward and only finish lines. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my failed sourdough bread experience.