November is National Novel Writing Month

A library shelf greeted me unexpectedly by surprise yesterday. The top shelf proudly displayed a sign, National Novel Writing Month with a beautifully designed page underneath that read, "Sharpen your nib and get creative - National Novel Writing Month."

The page (shown above) seemed to pop out at me so I browsed some of the many book titles on display. Two I ended up taking out, though one in particular jumped out at me: Writing for Children and Young Adults, a Self-Counsel Press writing series book by Dr. Marion Crook.

This book seemed to be a message to me as it reminded me of the 'career' card that I pulled from a small deck of 12 affirmation cards this morning. The cards were created by Anne Marie Evers, known as the 'affirmations lady.'

You may not believe in such things; however check the word 'synchronicity' as there were other indications through memory as well for me including an inspired story I wrote for young children.

Another, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language written by Natalie Goldberg appealed to me as well as I had read her Writing Down the Bones book previously; it may have been a suggested reading during my expressive arts therapy program.

You can read a brief blurb about Natalie here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Goldberg
or here at http://nataliegoldberg.com/.

November is apparently a heavy-duty writing month - must be the weather whoever originated that idea ;) - and is actually known as "National Novel Writing Month." It features a 30-day online writing challenge of a 50,000 word novel. NaNoWriMo (http://nanowrimo.org/) for short started 15 years ago! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month for details.

Now, I do not consider myself a novelist at all, albeit in about Grade 4, the idea of a story came to mind of a young girl and boy on an adventure. I think the girl's name was Susan, and the boy's name David, my favourite male name. Wow! Did I already know that back then?!

These characters, rather kids as they had no established character yet were pretty lifeless because I got as far as either one or two sentences to possibly a short paragraph at most.

And since then, now in fact, I think what happened? Why did I stop? Why did I not continue the journey, their journey to see where these two children would go? Where would their travels take them? What mischief would they get into, what troubles (problems) and surprises would await them?

Why hadn’t I continued to put pen to paper – no everyday computer back then! - instead of abandoning them?

Now, all I think I have left inside me, at present anyway, is at least one short story for young children that was inspired by a children's program that I ran a number of years ago.

Do you have at least one novel or book inside you? Would you consider participating in such a challenge: why or why not?

Written in response to Write Tribe Pro Blogger: November Challenges and Motivation (http://writetribe.com/challenges-and-motivation/) and is linked to NaBloPoMo and UltraBlogChallenge.