Recently the stores are not waiting even for October to start putting out Christmas things for us to buy. I started seeing lights, trees and ornaments as early as the summer. I remember when Christmas used to start closer to Thanksgiving, now the preparations are beginning right after the fireworks of the fourth of July.
However, the sights of Christmas decorations don’t make me think of festivities. It does remind to prepare for the celebration of the birth of My Lord and Savior, but that’s on my spiritual side. As a writer it starts to get my juices flowing for the event that I look forward all year around.
I have never been the athletic type. When I was taking journalism courses in college I took some sports journalism classes because I was determined to live vicariously by those with the gift of athletic ability. At that time, my dream was to cover the Olympic Games or the Superbowl as a journalist. But the Word says that you shall ask and you will receive and as a writer now I have a yearly Superbowl of my own… NaNoWriMo!
The coolest thing is that I don’t have to go through eliminations or rigorous exercises or a qualifying process to participate in my “Superbowl” All I have to do is go to www.nanowrimo.org and register for free… what an awesome thing! NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s the challenge to write a novel of 50k words or more in the month of November. Talk about an adrenaline rush.
This will be my fourth year. If you want to try it, you still have time. It doesn’t start until tonight at midnight. If you’re like me, you will be at 11:55pm with laptop in hand looking at the watch and the fingers ready to start. However, I have a dilemma that all of you can help me with. I have two stories to choose from to write this year and I can’t make up my mind on which one to write. Remember I have to start writing it tonight so your votes need to be casted ASAP.
Story 1: The adulteress- Contemporary Christian Fiction
A couple who’s been married for 18 years start struggling with the wife’s sudden desire for freedom and her infidelities. Can this marriage be restored? Can a praying husband bring his wife back to Christ?
Story 2: Greetings from Saint Nick- Murder-Mystery Christian Fiction
This is the sequel of Seasons Greeting from Amelia (Novella coming out December 14th) (Background on the Amelia Novella- Amelia and Daisy are high school friends. Daisy starts finding random letters from Amelia in her house, but Amelia is nowhere to be found. In each letter Amelia confesses to her best friend some of her crimes and leaving clues of the crimes she’s about to commit. Can Amelia be stopped? )
Then in Greetings from Saint Nick, Nicholas is Amelia’s son, now in college. Estelle, Daisy’s daughter, suspects that Nicholas is following in his mother’s footsteps, but nobody believes her. Is it true? Is Estelle just imagining things?
These will not be the covers for the actual books once they come up for publication. I just did these for fun.
I would love your opinion and looking forward to starting my writing “ Superbowl” tonight”
Go Pandas!!
Naty Matos 
Hey Naty!! I’m going to try to make it to one of your write-ins! It’s been a little insane around me right now, but not the “college insane.” I am definitely going to hit 50k this year – OH YEAH!! This is the year!! I’m jpetree on Nano, and I met you last year. 😀
Of course I remember. I sent you a message through Nano wanting to see if you would join us this year. It would be awesome to see you. My write-ins are these: Saturday 9-1 at J.Christophers (the same one you were attending) Wednesday at Five Spot Frozen Yogurt in Snellville from 7-10 and Fridays in the perimeter area at Panera Bread on Mt Vernon from 7-9 (except on Black Friday) I don’t go out when the crazy buyers are out…LOL! I’m glad that you are back and looking forward to seeing you.
I’ll be joining with you, Naty! Super excited. Woohoo! I may be up at 2:00 am I’m so excited. Can’t wait to bite into a new book while I finish edits on my other. Both of your ideas sound great! I’m not into mystery too much, so I lean towards the other, but I think whichever i firing your imagination more, where you can see the beginning, middle, and end and CANT WAIT to start living in the scenes! I so love that you made these covers for them too; how fun!!
I say go with the one that won’t leave you alone, lol. Which of the two really resonates every time you think of it? That’s the one that won’t leave you pounding your head on the desk as you attempt to knock the days word count loose from your brain matter. 🙂
I see you have done Nano before…hahaha! I have been holding The Adulteress very dear to my heart for months. I think the reason why Greetings from Saint Nick is in my head is because I just finish the edits of “Part 1′ since that book should be coming out soon.
I had the first one outlined and everything, but please don’t ask where it is right now…LOL!