Did I Cheat?

November is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to jump start a novel by writing 50,000 words in a single month. That’s a load of words!

I cheated. Well, I didn’t actually sign up, so maybe I can’t really be accused of cheating. But still… 

I reached the 50,000-word goal earlier this week. But they weren’t all “new” words. And I’m not working on a novel. 

I began a pandemic diary early last year – a desktop file where I wrote to untangle the insanity of 2020: from Trump to COVID, social justice to global warming, unemployment to homelessness. And on a personal level, my unplanned retirement and the birth of my grandson.

In late October 2020 when my daughter’s family leave ended, I began caring for my grandson a few days each week, and an odd thing happened. I began addressing my daily journal entries to my grandson. I began calling the file Pandemic Baby. I began thinking of it as a new memoir project.

A year of letters to Jack accumulated by the time NaNoWriMo 2021 rolled around. It seemed the perfect challenge: Could I shape these ramblings into a draft memoir? To answer that question, I cheated. I began cutting and pasting, rewriting and, yes, writing some “new” words as well. The manuscript is far from a finished first draft, but it’s a start. The challenge got me this far.

What about you? Do you have a memoir you’ve been wanting to get on the page? Perhaps for publication or perhaps for family? Do you need a challenge to get you started or instruction to keep you going?

I’m excited to be teaching a one-day memoir class on March 14, 2022 at Hugo House in Seattle. Perhaps that’s the challenge you need to breathe life into your project. If so, I look forward to seeing you in class. 

Registration opens soon. CLICK HERE for course description and registration information.