Happy belated Halloween and happy November to each of you!
With Thanksgiving approaching and the holiday season soon in full swing, November is a busy month for most of us.
It becomes more challenging to find solitary moments amidst a frentic schedule. I came to realize that it never happens unless we decide to create those moments. And yet there are necessary if you write.
NaNoWriMo starts today and for full disclosure I had totally forgotten about it.
The manuscript that landed me an agent early spring is still under consideration. My second manuscript is now ready for submission and will reach editors before Thanksgiving. Another one is ready as well and I am revising two other pieces.
I found out that I love revision so much more now that I can rely on my agent’s guidance. My critique partners are still my early readers. When I decide, based on their comments, that I have a draft worthy of my agent’s time I forward it to her.
Since she signed me after reading one of my Picture Book manuscripts, I am focusing on such pieces for now, a mix of nonfiction and fiction. But I still love novels. A lot.
So when I found Anne Lamott’s inspirational pep talk in my Inbox this morning I decided to return to a novel I had just started before receiving an offer of representation.
It is a little scary to go back to words written months ago, but anticipation is already building inside me.
I am not officially entering NaNoWriMo, but I will create some solitary writing moments, because…
“You either start now, or it is not going to happen for you, and you are going to wake up at seventy years old (or eighty, if you are already seventy) filled with sorrow that you let your dream, your passion, gift, fall by the wayside. You start now, as is.
‘As is’ is the portal to creation, to new life.”
Anne Lamott
Evelyne Holingue 