Year 8, Week: Happy Thanksgiving!

   

   

     This week we're on our Thanksgiving break and given the last two weeks (13 and 14), it's arrived at just the right time. Our homeschooling is going well. We've found our rhythm, albeit mostly a monotonous one since we're staying close to home. However, we did have a few exciting things happen in the past couple of weeks.

     Week 14 started with Little Toughie's online recital. This was a livestream and it was great to see how all the students were doing, even in the midst of this pandemic. She sang a version of "Fly Me to the Moon". It was pretty spectacular!

     Week 14 also ended with my winning NaNoWriMo nine days early. It wasn't my intention, but my daily goal has always been to write between 1800 and 2000 words. I  purposely buffered it keeping my birthday and Thanksgiving in mind. Toward the end of week 13 I surpassed the halfway mark of NaNoWriMo with a total of 27,177 words. The next day I hit 30,000. The words just kept adding up. When I reached 35,000 it seemed to move at warp speed and in no time I was 44,000 words. I decided to finish, spending most of Friday night and Saturday afternoon finishing my novel.

     In the end, I had written 50,312 words. While I've never ran a full marathon (I've ran a half) it was like crossing the finish line. There were tears of joy and I think I may have been holding my breath during the last 20 minute writing session because when I saw the work count hit 50,017 I had to stop and take deep breaths. My story wasn't quite done yet at that point so I had to get back to it and finish. I'll write more about my experience later on but I can say that I can't wait to do it again next year!

     A380 started our break week with lunch with our church's youth group directors. When it was confirmed that they'd be going it was all he could talk about. We're so very blessed to have young adults in our church to rise up and faithfully walk with Christ, proclaim His truth and lead the next generation. We need more of them!

     I'm finishing this blog after our traditional post-Thanksgiving walk and watching Captain Marvel. We're big Marvel fans! We'll be having a Zoom dinner with my family soon so I wish you all well. Cheers to you and yours on this Thanksgiving.

Year 8, Week 10: Writing

     This past week was filled with a lot of prep work on my part.  A lot of making double batches of meals to have and freeze.  A lot of running errands and gathering supplies.  A lot of dropping off and picking up books.  A lot of research and writing.  You might be wondering why I'm researching and writing and what the extra meals and supplies are all about, but I'll get to that in a bit.

     Let me share what my kids are doing for writing this school year first.  A380 is using Writing & Rhetoric, a program that I have come to love after trying a couple of different ones over the years.  This is one that the kids also enjoy so that's a bonus.  I work with A380 on his writing but for Little Toughie I wanted to change it up.  I wanted to challenge her this year so I signed her up for an online class through Circe (By the way, they have classes for adults too.  I took a Socratic class in the spring.)  I felt it would be good for her to have a different teacher; to get a different perspective and a different teaching style.  They both get to read great stories and then write their own.  I've kept copies of all their work and it's interesting to see how their writing has progressed.  One of these days, with their permission, perhaps I'll share some of it!

     As for all the running amok around remember that project I've been waiting to announce?  Here it is:  I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo (My husband calls it nanu-nanu!)  Basically, I'm going to draft a new novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days.  As you can tell, I'm a big fan of books.  I love to read but I also have a passion for writing; a passion I haven't really nurtured except for blogging.

     Every now and then a story will come to mind, but I'd let it go, believing that there's no way I could write that story.  However, at the beginning of this year I had a story that kept coming to mind so I started to write it.  When Covid hit my focus shifted to other things and so the writing stopped.  Early in October I remembered NaNoWriMo and decided to sign up.  I've read that it can be pretty time consuming considering that you only have 30 days to reach the goal.  I've spent the past few weeks prepping as much as I can, down to a rough outline, some aspects of my characters and researching settings.  Even now, as I write this I'm participating in an online writing forum filled with challenges and Q&A.

     It's not too late to join!  You can be a panster, a writer who writes by the seat of their pants and doesn't plot or plan when writing their novels.  I'm a planster...someone who plans a bit of it and will write it as it comes.  If you join, let me know.  We can be writing buddies!

     I have to go.  I have a 5 minute writing sprint to attend to and I'm already one minute behind.  Have a great week!  Oh, and A380 says, "Have a happy halloween!"