I went to church early this morning. I went shopping. I’ve been checking on and responding to my emails. I’ve been talking with friends and family. My dad went into the hospital yesterday, so I’ve been playing phone tag a lot yesterday and today. Since it’s not raining, I’m thinking about going outside to do more raking. (I like being outside.) Then there’s the box of apples I want to make into applesauce and can. MAN! I can think of a thousand things to do — each of them important, of course — besides writing, including emailing encouraging notes to my writer friends, telling them to quit reading their emails and write. So… now here I procrastinate further by blogging. Yeesh! 

(Interesting side note from today: My sister in Florida just told me she saw our dead mother last weekend in our Dad’s apartment walking from the foot of his bed to staring out the window. Okay. I don’t think I’M sleeping in that apartment again! Ever! Maybe I ought to be working on a ghost story.)

While seeking some basic questions about my NaNo story background, I got to thinking about my own writing disciplines. Usually it takes me about four years to write the first draft of a book, and even longer to do a historical novel. For my purposes (and initial, tentative questions), this month I hope to get the story-only started, and over the next few years, will continue with my research as well as writing craft. Sometimes the hardest part of writing is simply doing it — BIC HOK TAM, as Book-in-a-Week says.

Normally, I write a story, revise it a few times, send it through my critique groups, revise again, send it through the same or other readers, throw the book against the wall and turn my back on it for months or years, before I rewrite the whole thing from scratch, only to do the revisions-critique groups-revisions-rewrites all over again. So, just to assure you, what I put out this month won’t look anything like what I image and hope the end product will be. My initial research questions are just for some skeletal parts to the story. My research, and writing, is on-going. (Written in defense of question-asking during NaNoWriMo.)

(And I’m detecting a pattern to my tags lately. Sad. Very sad.)