If you haven’t heard — I’m doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year for the first time in years. The last time I did it successfully was 2015, and I tried it in 2017 only to make it less than halfway through. This year, I decided kind of last minute that I wanted to go for it. Sure, that might be crazy for someone with a three-year-old, an almost two-year-old, and a five-month-old. But the timing actually works pretty well for where things are in our family. The baby has started to get enough of a routine that I was ready to delve back into writing, and there’s a novel I’ve been percolating in my head for about five years that I really wanted to start getting on paper, so I figured it was worth a shot. As my husband said when I asked him if he minded, he said, “The worst that can happen is you fail!” Which would mean either I at least got some words down, or I got none, in which case I had lost nothing.

As of day 9, I’ve managed to stay on track and am just under 15,000 words. It’s the most I’ve written in a very long time, and it feels good, even though the writing hasn’t been completely easy. On day two, I realized that my “story” was actually not a real story, but rather about two scenes and a general theme, and I was not going to get 50,000 words out of that! This seems to happen every single time I go to write a novel — it seems so full and fleshed-out in my head, then I sit down to write it and go — “Oh.”

So I had to spend most of day two outlining and filling out the plot. But thankfully that went fairly smoothly, and I’ve been keeping up with my word count pretty well since.

And what is this novel? It’s called Shows. I don’t have a really clear synopsis or description for you yet, but here’s what I can tell you — it’s about a girl named Rachel who moves to the big city with a friend after her college graduation and ends up getting involved in a 12-step recovery ministry at her new church. The story involves her relationships with those she meets there and her growing realization that people — herself included — are rarely what they seem.

The writing, despite going at a good pace, has been rough, as first drafts usually are. I just have to tell myself over and over, “It’s just a first draft; it’s just a first draft; it’s just a first draft…” But there are occasional passages where it flows a bit better, and I thought I would share one of those excerpts with you all! Then I’ll need to get back to writing… I still have another 600 words for the day…

When Denise got home that evening, she found me pulling every item of clothing I owned out of my closet.

“Having a fashion crisis?” she asked, poking her head into the room.

She was wearing a blue t-shirt that said “Nailscar” in the NASCAR font, which honestly seemed to me to be bordering on sacrilegious.

“They let you wear those shirts at school?” I asked, holding up a blouse and studying it.

“No.” She walked into the room and sat cross-legged on the bed, flicking aside skirts and jackets to make room as she got comfortable. “I changed when I got home. What’s shakin’?”

“I have a job interview.” I discarded the blouse and held up another one, a white ruffled top. “I’ve never had one before.”

“Ooh.” She sat up straighter. “You’ve come to the right place! I’ve had tons.”

I kept myself from pointing out that I hadn’t come anywhere – she had come into my room. Also that, unless there was a lot I didn’t know, she hadn’t had “tons” of interviews. She had gotten a teaching job right out of college.

“Don’t you have anything that’s not denim?” She poked at a knee-length skirt near her knee. “You don’t want to look too homeschooled.”

“I am homeschooled.”

“Well yeah, but you don’t want to look like it.” She picked out everything denim and dumped it on the floor.

“I wasn’t going to wear denim, anyway. I know that’s too casual.”

She pointed to a crimson cardigan. “Show me that.”

“But it’s June.”

“Just show me.”

I picked it up and held it out to her. She grabbed it and tossed it down. “Good. Do you have any slacks?”

“No.”

She jumped up and dug through my neat pile of clothes, emerging with a brown skirt in one hand and a cream tank top in the other. “Here you go.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Hush, I know you would never allow an uncovered tank top to grace your modest shoulders.” She reached down and held up the sweater I had shown her earlier. “Here’s the plan. You put on the skirt and tank and take the sweater with you. That way, if you get all sweaty in the car, you can cover it up when you get there. It’s a light sweater, and offices are usually cold anyway – it’s in an office, I’m guessing, since you’re stressing out?”

My irritation with her invasion of my privacy and her treatment of my clothes was greatly mollified by the relief I felt at the perfect solution to my dilemmas. “You’re a genius,” I said, taking the skirt and top from her.

“So it’s been said.” She tossed her head with a grin. “Gotta go grade some essays, see you later.”

I laid the clothes she had decreed acceptable over the back of my chair and put everything else neatly back into the closet where it belonged.