Do You NaNo?
I have this notebook I found. The first three pages are filled with handwritten words, the beginning of a story. A young girl is distressed as she watches her mother go into labor. The girl feels the pain of the contractions, sees the white-hot light that blurs her mother's vision. As her father takes his laboring wife away, Grandmother comforts the little girl, trying to explain her gift. I don't remember when I wrote these pages. Worse yet, I have no idea where the story goes from there. I wrote it then left it to rot and spoil, to become a snippet of an idea, never able to grow or flourish. This is how I wrote for many years. Sporadically, randomly. A poem here, a story there. I had no focus or structure. Admittedly, not having a computer or typewriter was a huge stumbling block. How all those authors wrote entire novels with a pen is beyond me. My carpal tunnel would never allow it. My first book took me two years to write. I would work on it for a day or two, ...