Halloween Came and Went and Now for Another NaNoWriMo

The plan to write something (blog post, toddler journal, novel draft, whatever) at least three times a week in October worked for about a week and a half. But these words are officially counting towards NaNoWriMo now. Hold please while I check and see how many words I wrote last year. 

Whoa, after going through a password reset (it's an old email, glad it worked!) I wrote over 40,000 words last year. Go, Kris, go! I remember it going quite well.

For those who may be new around here, I covered NaNoWriMo at great length in a blog post about a year ago. The upshot is I've been doing this off and on since 2009. Generally the plan is you start a new writing project (your novel, the name of this operation being National Novel Writing Month) on November 1 and try to get a full draft (50,000 words) written in 30 days. There are events (all virtual these days but once upon a time we used to meet up places) and challenges and it's a nonprofit, they have a young writer's program, the whole bit. Over the years I've won more than I've lost but while I've tried to make some revisions to projects here and there nothing has really come of any of them. That's actually not true. In the spring of 2015 I did Camp NaNoWriMo (it's like a smaller version of the event) and that's what launched my podcast. The reason I did Camp NaNoWriMo is because I attempted NaNoWriMo that fall of 2014 and James had the worst sleep regression of his life and it didn't go well.

Anyway, I'm doing this year what I did last...which is kind of a hodge podge. I'm writing a novel in verse so I want to keep going forward with that, don't want to launch into a new project and I know it's not gonna get me the word count. So these words count. James and I are going to try again to co-write a picture book and those words count. I'm still plugging away at the toddler journal and those words count. Plus I will try to keep writing my novel in verse. I actually did some of it while my in laws were in town by hand because I didn't want to pull the whole typewriter operation out and they slept in the room that usually functions as my office. Hand writing is nice. In years where NaNoWriMo has worked for me I've done a lot of hand writing on legal pads. In the fall of 2017 I won...I really like what I came up with that fall and it was a fabulous experience although on the rewrite I learned it wasn't a story I wanted to tell that way. But I wrote a LOT  in the church library while James was in preschool. Man, that was another time.

Anyway, to go back, because I skipped some stuff. Yes, my in laws were here for several days in mid October and it was lovely. I actually wanted to blog some during that time but didn't have access to my office, which is okay. These are the sacrifices we make for family. It was actually great to have them here while James was in school because there wasn't a ton of pressure to do things. They spent time with the kids and hung out with them, on the weekend we went antiquing and to a park, and then on the Monday before they left they did some touristy Seattle things on their own. It was nice to see them again. We probably won't see them until next summer now.

The other big thing that happened was of course Halloween which we are still in recovery from. Halloween isn't my favorite thing ever but it went off well. James wanted to be Darth Vader and a friend of mine supplied the mask and light saber, which I wrapped in crepe paper to make it red. I was able to cut up an old black pillowcase and safety pin it to a black shirt to complete the look. Max was excited to be Thomas, which is an old costume of James's he had in his drawer. Well, that's not true. Max was excited to wear a train T-shirt and occasionally okay with the idea of putting a Thomas costume on over it. The week of Halloween he decided nope, he was going to be Lightning McQueen. He ended up a hybrid. We went to the second year of Auntie Molly's Halloween bash, an event she invented last year to try to create a safe Covid Halloween for the kids and which we did again this year because it was fun. Yesterday, Max decided the Thomas costume was too tight and so he wore the Lightning McQueen costume from last year which actually fits him better now. 

Both days were really fun. We had a friend who is a single mom with a Halloween birthday and her son come for dinner. We have spent most Halloweens with them since the kids were babies. And there was actual trick or treating on our street which I've never seen. The kids were excited...Halloween is hard because it's an evening holiday so there is a lot of waiting around during the day, but it was super fun. I'm kind of the Halloween grinch but I've decided I like the day of quite a lot actually. The lead up to it I can do without.

And now here we are in November, a month I've come to embrace. Here's to much writing, much baking, my birthday, my sister's family coming for Thanksgiving (more on that later,) and hopefully lots of hot drinks to ward off rain and early nights. Daylight savings time is Sunday, gross.

I'm distracted because I'm in Discord while I do this. Discord is where the local NaNo people hang out. Discord makes me feel ANCIENT. I'm feeling...very not a milennial of late. My conversation with my sister about how best to send her money for her birthday was HILARIOUS. So anyway, I've had to be on Discord a bit lately because there was a bookstagram buddy read over there last month (of Passing, which is a BRILLIANT BOOK.) And now NaNoWriMo. I really just want Discord to be simple like the AOL instant messenger of my college days, but it is not. So I am old. I legit don't know how people write with all the distractions. 

So last year I was super ready to go and had a spreadsheet of what words I was writing where and on what date. This year I have none of that. This year it's 2021 and this girl is just surviving life. So I may need to go soon and invent all of that.

Media consumption...OH! I have a good story about this. I shared it on Instagram but this might be a more permanent place to put this so that I have a good record of it because it is a story I want to remember. I just finished a book last night that has a story to it, so indulge me for a moment if you will.

In the summer of 2002 I was Assistant Camp Director at a Girl Scout camp in New Hampshire. It was an awesome experience that I legit can't believe was almost 20 years ago. At that point I had worked 4 summers at my childhood camp of St. Albans and in the fall of 1999 got on a Greyhound bus and spent a season working at a special needs camp in Cedar Rapids, Iowa because if I stayed in college they were going to make me declare a major and I didn't have one. (I returned to college after a season, much to the relief of my dad, and got a B.A. in Political Science which was a strange decision but worked for me.)

So anyway, a friend of mine had worked out in New Hampshire for a couple of years, another mutual friend from St. Albans had moved out there and hired her. I was working my first post college job and it was not going awesome for me, so she suggested I quit and drive across country to New Hampshire and work for her for a summer, which I did (got out of that job just in time might I add.) It was a truly awesome experience and I think directly led to my traveling to New Zealand the following year.

I could write much more about New Hampshire, but the story of this book comes about as we were leaving. Legs (the friend who first hired my friend to go out there in the first place) had been director for a summer at another camp in the council. We were all cleaning out camps and getting ready to head home, and on her way home from her camp she stopped to say goodbye but missed us and left a few things for us. What she left me was a book that she had found in cleaning out her camp. I've still got it, all these years later, this falling apart book that has moved with me to who the heck knows how many places. Clipped inside it is the same note, held in there with the same paperclip: "To Bigfoot. This book needs to be loved. Hope you like it <3 Legs."

The book is Juliette Low and the Girl Scouts from 1928 and I'm certain it's a first edition. This is not a particularly rare or valuable book but it is old. I've taped the spine and cover back together, sort of. And this past week...I finally read it. Halloween is Juliette Low's birthday.

Juliette Low, for the uninitiated, is the founder of Girl Scouts in the U.S. She lived in both England and Savannah, Georgia (her husband was English) and in 1912 she met the founder of the Boy Scouts, Lord Baden-Powell, and learned about efforts to start Girl Guides in the U.K. She brought the idea home and started a Girl Scout troop in her backyard (she had no children of her own.) She died of breast cancer in early 1927 at the age of 66 and by that time there were over 150,000 registered Girl Scouts all over the U.S. and the worldwide organization had had four conferences, the 1926 conference in the U.S. How fast this organization grew was staggering and did I mention there was a World War in there somewhere?

As you can see, I learned a lot from the book...and the tape helped it not fall apart while I was reading it. The book was published in 1928 and is less a biography and more a collection of memories of people who knew her. I had to keep my phone near me to keep looking up facts of her actual biography, but it is a lovely tribute. I love this book so much as object and I'm so glad I finally read it. While I was doing so, I actually even read another old book, one of the unread Girl Scout books on my shelf, a mystery from the 1950s called The Girl Scouts at Penguin Pass. It wasn't bad. The Juliette Low book was better.

It's November now, so new book plans. I'm doing the indigathon so I have a stack of books by indigenous writers, mostly kids books. Today I started Ancestor Approved, a book of interconnected short stories for kids by indigenous writers. I have high hopes for this book. And it's November, month of Armistice Day, so I started today listening to Rilla of Ingleside which was one of my FAVORITE books as a kid and launched my lifelong love of WWI lit. Speaking of which I have a book from 1917 about the Belgians I really want to read. Since I'm loving old books and all. I am so weird.

OH. Speaking of media consumption, last weekend the kids and I watched A Goofy Movie. It was a DELIGHT. I am WAY too old to like that movie as much as I do...I am not a milennial, as has been established, I was in high school when it came out....but I love it.

Other media...we are staying up on the new episodes of The Great British Baking show. I am team Jurgen. He reminds me of Josh.

I know this was all over the place...I need to not go so long between blog posts and I probably really need to stay off Discord. But I will do better in November...I have to...I need the words.

Today I'm grateful for books, old books, friends, Halloween, candy, chocolate, cooking, my family, in person school, fall foliage, and writing.