So much to be thankful for...

While rocking my youngest son to sleep this evening, I took a moment in the unusual quiet to think about all the reasons I have to be thankful this year. Thanksgiving was wonderful, as the family converged upon our tiny house to enjoy dinner- we all had a great time. It has been a big year for our family. My father has been cancer free for a year. Our youngest, after surgery this past March, can hear well and is learning how to talk now with the help of a brilliant therapist-hearing "I Love You" for the first time, now that's a blessing. Our middle son enjoyed a great soccer season and is really growing into a fine young man, and our oldest enjoyed her first homecoming dance and has just recently had her braces removed. Exciting times I tell you! We are a creative bunch at our house, it's usually a zoo, but it's nice to have those quiet times to reflect on how fortunate we are.
I'm also thankful our Internet has been restored after our family dog(i.e. my husbands beloved pet) had seen fit to chew through the cable wire outside(twice) during this Thanksgiving weekend. Now that the cooking and cleaning are out of the way(yes, I do clean the house more than once a year), I can get back to the business of writing.  Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

18,000 words and counting

The idea came to me a little over a year ago. I was in the parking lot of my daughter's orthodontist when a random thought smacked me in the back of the head and just exploded into this book I had to write. It couldn't wait.  I had heard of this happening before but it had never happened to me. A journalist by trade, I had always secretly wished I could think of some great idea that would blossom into a work of fiction. But I had come to the conclusion I was just meant to write nonfiction-those ideas usually come pretty easy to me. This particular idea however reared its head on the eve of NaNoWriMo(that's National Novel Writing Month for you non-WriMos). The object of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days-it was a challenge I had just accepted.
So November 1 off I went with a great idea for a thriller and  absolutely no idea about writing fiction. I plunked those keys like crazy trying to keep up with the others in my region. Sometimes the words came easy, other times I wanted to throw the computer out the window. I tried...but sadly I was not a winner last year, I didn't leave NaNoWriMo with a 50,000 word novel. I didn't leave empty-handed either. I'm still hard at work on the book I started last year. I know, 18,000 words in a year is nothing to brag about-but its a start...and I'm working towards an ending.