Earned my cup of tea!

Like the nice lady in the picture to the right, I have earned myself a cup of tea. While my mug may not be as big as hers, I am just as enthusiastic about having it. Last week, when I was grocery shopping, I bought a package of loose leaf tea. I've been making my own 'tea pods' to use in the Senseo coffee maker. Making my own pods means I can use different coffee and loose leaf tea in the Senseo. It's something I've been really enjoying.

November was a very busy month for me. I was doing National Novel Writing Month. Granted, I have written novels in other months, NaNoWriMo holds a special spot in my heart. It taught me that I can write a book in a month (One year, I manage to write two even!) and that I can produce quality work at that pace.

I started doing NaNoWriMo with Stargazer a few years after I had graduated from college. I was vaguely aware of National Blog Posting Month from Stargazer's regular updates to her Livejournal. When she mentioned NaNoWriMo, I decided to take the plunge. While she was writing Gundam Wing fanfiction, I set to work on writing the sixth version of the first book in my fantasy series. As I watched my word count numbers climb, I started getting excited. She started getting excited. It was a beautiful thing.

Now that NaNoWriMo is done, I'm taking a break from the fantasy series. So far this year, I have written three books in the series. While a part of me is itching to get to work on book six, I'm stepping away from it for a little while so that I can take a mental break from it. Now, I'm working on writing my memoirs and this is proving to be a lot more challenging then writing fiction. It strikes me as a rather contrary thing, to be honest. I don't have to do the work of creating a new world and people for it. All I am doing is recording my memories.

At the same time, this is a grueling process. Partly because I have a great deal of past trauma that I have wound up writing about. And partly because I am finding it difficult to express the 3d quality of the memories. As I am a bit of a masochist, I have decided to write this monster by hand. I started work on it on the first. As of today, I am about twelve pages in. My goal is to write three pages a day.

Honestly, I feel like it is a reasonable goal, even if life got in the way for a few days. At the same time, I am working hard on my writing in other areas of my life as well. I have resumed writing in my journal. Right now, all I can manage is one page in fifteen minutes. I feel woefully out of practice writing by hand. Still, I know that page count will go up as I get back into the swing of things. I have also resumed writing my 'morning pages' as suggested in the book The Artist's Way. I'm making my morning pages do double duty, as I am writing them in my therapy journal.

I have been letting several of my blogs languish for a while now. I want to get back to writing in them, so I am returning to my writing schedule that I had last spring. I recognize that I may not hit 100% on them, especially with the holidays going on and my finishing up my crafting work. It is, however, a goal that I want to accomplish by the end of the year. My thinking is, if I can write 50K+ in a month, I can parcel that out to different projects. It gives me the opportunity to work on different things and still keep a manuscript in the works.

I believe that I will save editing for a summer endeavor. As soon as I can manage to find the space, I will be hooking up my printer and printing off hard copies of my manuscripts. While editing on the computer is easier in some respects, I think that editing a printed copy is going to be more portable and user friendly when the kids are on break from school.

But, that is what's on my mind right now. I hope that you all are having a wonderful day. Enjoy your own cup of tea or coffee or whatever beverage strikes your fancy. I think you've earned a few minutes to kick back and relax too. :)