My NANO..MD

November is National Novel Writing Month- a fun "kick in the pants", with a lot of interaction from other NANO writers both locally and internationally, to just get that first draft down and fill the white pages- you can track your word count and if you get to 50,000 words in the month, the average of a novel, you can post an award on your site! I tried it last year- puttered out about half way through- this year- I was deep in outlining a YA, so am not participating- since NANO wants you to start with a fresh idea first of the month.I am doing NANOMD-  Get the ...NOTES and NOTES OFF MY DOOR month. You know that technique- plotting out your outline on note cards, laying them on the floor, so that you can move things around, get the bird's eye view of your novel.  Well I have a little problem keeping track of a bunch of little pieces of paper-wind drafts and big dog tails tend to make them go flutter...i.e. you tape them to the back of your door! Brilliant, except eventually the tape loses its grip and I have to go looking for where key plot points went fluttering to.
I recently had my own "kick in the pants" to finally get serious to writing this novel that has been swimming around in my head for a very,very long time. I was up in the Denver area to speak at the RMC SCBWI Fall Conference on a panel of First Published Writers and Illustrators with the fun Jean Reidy and Lindsay Eland, both writers and I was the illustrator, well the day before, I had a rock the size of a grapefruit go into the car' windshield going about 50 mph down the highway-

the force of the impact covered my mom and I with glass dust and blew out my entire back window- thank God -we and no one else around us was hurt. Well needless to say, I had a hard time going to sleep that night, God and I had a little conversation and you know- I felt pretty good about my life- being a mom, a wife, my service to Him, in the church, but what went to the front of my mind was this Novel! That I hadn't written it! That I hadn't put my all towards my art and my writing! Not saying the "World need me to write this novel" more it has become a blockage in my creative pipes- I'm constipated and need to blow this "Monstrosity" out of my head to be able to move forward!! Thus why my door is covered white- it is all there- it has been there for, well I don't want to admit how long this thing has been perfectly laid out in my head- getting it on the paper- that first draft- that first "crappy" draft- that is what my hope for November is- no matter how crappy it is! FYI- after all that- the YA is set in Utah during World War 2- centered around the young daughter of a Polygamist and about a little known fact that the Manhattan Project was secretly searching for Uranium for the Bombs in Utah.