Most Favorite Time of Year

It’s my favorite time of year.

The leaves are turning colors and turning loose so that every walk has a crunch to it. The days and nights are cooler, with frosty mornings calling for sweaters and socks and boots. Pumpkin is the main dessert option with all it’s warm spices.

Halloween has just finished, full of fun and whimsy. Now, November is here, with the promise of more yummy food, family time, and full-speed-ahead to Christmas.

But my favorite part of November has become Nanowrimo. If you’re not familiar with it, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s crazy, you say. Maybe. But I’ve participated and won 8 times. This is my ninth, and I know it’s going to be a good one because my characters have been IN MY HEAD for months now, telling me all sorts of great things to write through the month.

I’m the type of person who thrives on a challenge. If I see a cute crochet pattern, that’s fun, but if I can find one with a more complicated stitch, I’m more likely to do it. I could simply buy Halloween costumes, but instead I make a lot of them myself, even if I don’t have a pattern. Because I can’t pass up the challenge to do it right.

Same goes for Nanowrimo. 50,000 words is a high goal, although most publishers are looking for upwards of 60,000. That’s why several years ago, I decided to set my personal goal for November at 65,000 words. And I have passed it for the last two years.

Here’s the deal about participating in something like this:

• Don’t expect to come out of it with a perfect manuscript.
• Do expect to come out of it with a good start.
• Even if you don’t “win,” you still wrote SOMETHING, and that’s much better than not writing anything at all.
• Do it with a friend. You can challenge and encourage each other along the way.
• Have fun with it. When writing loses its fun, it’s just a job instead of creative and artistic.

If you’d like to follow me as I do my Nanowrimo journey this year, my username is jersgirl. Come add me as a “buddy” and let’s tackle this challenge together.

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Amy R Anguish, author of An Unexpected Legacy, grew up a preacher’s kid, and in spite of having lived in seven different states that are all south of the Mason Dixon line, she is not a football fan. Currently, she resides in Tennessee with her husband, daughter, and son, and usually a bossy cat or two. Amy has an English degree from Freed-Hardeman University that she intends to use to glorify God, and she wants her stories to show that while Christians face real struggles, it can still work out for good.

Check out her new book, Faith & Hope, available now.

Her new book, Saving Grace, releases September 2020.

Follow her at http://abitofanguish.weebly.com or http://www.facebook.com/amyanguishauthor