NaNoWriMo & Time – Why Can’t There Be More of It?

Sometime in October, I can’t be sure because that month was an absolute blur, I stumbled upon a blog with some National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) tips, and got it into my head that this would be the year that I participated. The more I read, the more I was convinced that I could somehow make the time to get a draft down on paper. And yet, today is the second day of November, and I’m already a day behind.

What many of you don’t know is that I have a book that I’ve been tossing around, have made small outlines for, and even traveled and had a cup of coffee with a friend I’d not seen in thirty years and on another continent. My book has absolutely nothing to do with parenting (shocking, I know), and everything to do with the fact that I grew up as a third culture kid (TCK).

Growing up an Air Force brat, not only were the places where we were stationed both beautiful and interesting, but as an American, I experienced culture shock returning to America, after living abroad.

The point is that I have a story to tell, some very interesting research about TCKs to integrate and explain many of my own emotional and psychological experiences, and there is no other book out there like it. The problem? Time.

Time is always the problem, and even moreso now that my business has taken off. My workload is 100% writing, which makes it difficult to come back to the computer, after many hours writing for others, even if it is to tell my own story. The other stumbling block I have in my way is money.

In order to delve into my story, I need to travel to Europe to visit the places where I lived. I can only rely on my [failing] memories so much, without having very real physical and visual prompts. The money for just myself to travel is completely doable, but I want to bring my husband and son along to show them pieces of my childhood.

There is a complexity of emotion involved with having a childhood that’s not accessible or readily shareable, something I hope to delve into in my book. Where my husband can take us on tours of the homes in which he lived and grew in Delaware, I have no such trace of my childhood available in this country.

At any rate, our new home is more of a priority than our travel, so I tell myself that my book travel is part of a 5-year plan. My son will be older, and more apt to remember the trip, and it will be more practical to spend that kind of money then, rather than now (right?).

So, all of this is to say that I’m going to make an effort to at least get a skeleton draft completed this month, or at least as much as I can without traveling.