Down the Rabbit Hole

NaNo, Hope & Luck

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 2248--September 28, 2020
Prompt: Now that we have only a couple of days to the "October NaNoWriMo Prep Challenge" [13+] by
(362) , are you going to write a novel this year? With or without doing the NaNo, what is your best approach to write a novel: vignettes, outlines, character developing or what? If you are a NaNo rebel, what is in your book-writing future, then?
If you are not ready to write a novel yet, what do you think of the NaNo program?

Every year I tell myself that I will sign up for NaNo and work on my novel. Every year. This year however is has provided me with the only legitimate excuse I've ever had for not doing so. The pandemic, and subsequent fall out, has derailed most of my plans for 2020 and sidelines all the best ones for 2021 sadly. I, along with much of the nation, have had to adapt to a new normal that has included remote learning. Here in the northeast, our restrictions remain pretty tight and most schools are doing a hybrid model for school. It requires me to be creative with my work schedule and far more hands on when it comes to my daughter's education. That translates into far less time for me to pursue anything I might have planned for myself including, but not limited to, NaNo. I've always viewed NaNo as a viable and necessary piece on my journey to novel publication. It encourages me to develop commitment and discipline, two elements I am lacking in my writing practice. This year however, it seems like it would add additional demands to a daily routine that already has me feeling stressed and too thinly spread. Perhaps next year? Maybe by the fall of 2021, I will be able to regroup and make a new plan...one can only hope.



"Blogging Circle of Friends "
Day 2873: September 28, 2020
Prompt: Use these words: mountain - clover - stone

The stone was cool in my palm, it's surface worn down and smooth by my worrying fingertips. I rubbed my thumb over the word carved into the back, feeling the rough outline of the letters H.O.P.E. I released the stone and it dropped down into my bag. I heard the faint clink as it made contact with something hard in the bowels of my backpack. I shouldered the pack and turned to gaze out across the Somes Sound to Cadillac mountain, rising through the morning fog like a sleeping leviathan rising from the deep.

In an hour the early autumn sun would burn the fog away and the landscape would reveal itself as a picturesque kaleidoscope of colors; deep reds, golds and oranges punctuated by stubborn pockets of emerald pines and fur trees. By that time, I would be gone, driving south, away from the colors and the comfort of my coastal New England town.

My hand strayed to the silver-plated clover on the chain around my next, another talisman, and a closed my hand around it. Hope and luck would be my faithful traveling companions on this one way trip. I prayed they would be enough.