Y is for Yesterday

I didn’t pick up my laptop yesterday. Or the day before that. Or the day before that. Or the week before that. Or the month before that. On the 4th of May I took a positive pregnancy test. Anybody who has been following my blog knows I have tried to get pregnant for years and it’s been a hard journey. As soon as I sat there with the positive pregnancy test, everything else went out the window. Nothing else mattered.

I was suspended from work in mid-September (they’re suspending pregnant workers in Sweden because of risks with Covid for people who can’t work from home or who have risky jobs). For the first weeks I was just enjoying being home. Preparing. Resting. I joined a pregnancy swimming group. Took walks. Finished playing God of War and started a new legacy run on Sims 4. And then…

This morning I was on Instagram and I saw a post on NaNoWriMo and then I started thinking… Back in my regular Tumblr days, when I was a student, before I had published anything, NaNoWriMo was huge. And I usually tried to participate, writing long fanfictions about Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Then I grew up, started working and became a published author. And I never participated in NaNoWriMo again.

It’s November in a few days. I’m not really prepared for NaNoWriMo, not with the sequel for Bittersweet and Sparrow that needs a lot of preparations but I took up my laptop and I’m in full author mode. So that is my big update, I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo, not through the site but independently and tracking my possible progress on Instagram. I’m however seven months pregnant so no promises, both baby and body are fickle and some days I feel crap. But I’m so glad to have the creative juices flowing again.

I talked to my sister-in-law who is a writer with a Tumblr but who had no idea what NaNoWriMo even is. She is six years younger than me, so I feel like there is a generational gap between us when it comes to Tumblr culture. However, I couldn’t believe that she doesn’t know what it is… at all.

How about you guys? You who are reading this, are you doing NaNoWriMo? Do you know what it is?

N is for NaNoWriMo

I know that I’m really on the letter M but since my dog Sheeba fell into eternal sleep on Sunday, the only M I can think of is mourning. I need a distraction and what better distraction is there than NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo for those who don’t know is a challenge to write 50 000 words in a month, basically write a whole novel give or take. You can learn more about the challenge here, however I’m in no way affiliated with that website. In fact I don’t even have an account there. I’m just doing this in my own little bubble.

So what does this mean?

It means I’ll try to post the word count of the day on my twitter.

It means I’ll use this challenge to write every day which I usually don’t do during working weeks.

The last time I did this challenge was back in 2012 or something silly like that so it’s very overdue.

It would be kind of nice to finish another novel before 2018 too and if I do this and manage, I would be so proud of myself.

I’ve already written about 4000 words on the project, these words will not be counted towards the challenge.

A piece of advice to myself:

If I write around 1600-1700 words per day I will meet the goal. Just under 2k words isn’t a problem. On those days when I feel like writing more, I will. I doubt I’ll write every day for 30 days so it’s good to build up a buffer on the days I can.

Anybody else doing the challenge?