I'm back! Its December 1.

As anyone who follows me on Facebook knows, I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month all of November. the object of " Nanowrimo" is to write 50,000 words in 30 days during November. I put aside all other writing projects, including blogging, to do this year's Nanowrimo. Although I STILL did not complete the 50,000-word challenge, I DID start a heck of a writing project that I plan to {eventually} finish.  I'm writing a young adult paranormal novel about a young werewolf's freshman year at university.  Writing in the YA/Paranormal Romance genre has proven to be more challenging than I had anticipated, but I am in no way giving up on completing the draft of the novel.

It has also been a rough weekend, football-wise, for me. My Steelers lost to those hated Baltimore Ravens on Thanksgiving eve and yesterday my Crimson Tide fell at literally the last daggone SECOND to that other Alabama college football team. Ugh.

Today also marks the beginning of the Advent season in the liturgical year. When Best Dude and I walked into the nave today before morning Mass, I noticed that the altar cloths, our priest's vestments and the wall hangings on the east wall are a glorious purple hue. To me, Advent is a season of hopeful anticipation for new beginnings.

This year Best Dude and I will participate in Las Posadas, a symbolic procession of a likeness of the Blessed Mother & St Joseph that will travel from house to house among parishioners throughout the Advent season. I've not done this before, so I'm looking forward to Mary & Joseph " visiting"our house on the 10th of this month. Las Posadas reminds me that the hopeful anticipation of the season sets the tone for what the Christmas hustle & bustle REALLY should be about: Our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to the secular,. albeit FUN aspects of the holiday season.

It is hard, but I am making a concerted effort to take " time out for the coming Christ" this Advent. Won't you join me?

Amen.

1 Advent 2013

Nothing at all to writing...only blood, sweat & tears

Today's quote is :

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter & bleed." ~Ernest Hemingway

Well, said Old Man of The Sea.

I am still not anywhere near finished with my short story. To be quite honest: I have not looked at it since last month.  I've discovered that writing a work of fiction that is so entangled in some emotional truth in my life is hard.

I WANT to tell this story, and I NEED to tell it. Yet I've had the worst trouble with " writers' block".

Writers' block sucks.

For a few days, I was faithful in my pursuit of literature. I wrote every day, if only a paragraph or two.  I've discovered that the closer I get to the "truth" upon which the fiction is based, the more trouble I find while trying to make the words come.

Yuck.

Writing can be literally PAINFUL. It can call to one's subconscious all sorts of" demons" from one's past. {Especially if said mental demon that is the subject of the work of fiction was not * all bad*}

Sigh.