I am officially announcing it, right here, right now.
The Half-Goal is a thing.
At least it should be.
I made it one the other day, when I surpassed writing 25,000 words in the first eleven days of November as part of my NanoWriMo challenge. The goal—the whole goal that I’ve set for myself—is to write 50,000 words this month towards a new project that I’m working on. A brand-new, from scratch, fictional novel. Every day when Maverick goes down for his nap, some evenings and some mornings on the weekends, I sit down at my desk to write. I have been inspired by this novel, the words streaming out of me on auto-pilot. It wasn’t until the other night, November 10, that I didn’t write over 2,000 words in one sitting. And that was just because we were busy and Brad and I had a “date night” in planned to play Super Mario 64 on our Nintendo Switch.
Yes, we’re nerds. It’s fun!
And even though I didn’t surpass my daily word count goal by a lot—I wrote 1,870 words when my daily goal is 1,700—I still feel like I knocked it out of the park. It may be a half-goal, but what a milestone it is!
It’s been a stretch. I’m not going to lie. There are things around my house that need to get done, the dishes, some cooking, but those things can wait. This month, I am choosing my writing over the rest of it.
That’s not to say I’m totally slacking … but I have dedicated nearly all of the time that I have for me, to writing.
And it feels great!
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
Up until now, I haven’t shared what my new project is about. I’m not entirely sure why. I’m super into it and excited when I sit down to write. The idea came to me after a post I read on a group I’m in on Facebook for fans of the podcast I follow, Off the Vine. The group shares tales of motherhood, silly stories about partners or single life. A lot of the girls are significantly younger than I am, but it’s fun to share life stories with each other as well as our love for all things Kaitlyn Bristowe. And there was one story in particular recently that sparked an entire fictional novel in me. It was instant, the emotions of a young mother not only struggling through the early, unkown stages of motherhood—which are fucking hard, if you ask me—but having had no idea that she was pregnant until she was in labour (apparently this is a show on TLC?).
It was a real story! I swear! And I’ve done some minimal research on the topic, it actually happens to some people that they have no idea that they are pregnant until much later in their pregnancies. This story, my story, follows a young girl, Clara, who starts having contractions and on arrival at the hospital, she is told that she is not only expecting, but is in labour.
This year’s November writing challenge came with really great timing. I was ready to send another draft of Romilegal to some test readers, and I’ve been able to focus entirely on my next book. I prepared with an outline, and every day when I sit down to write, I have the scenes in front of me that I have to write that day. It’s been working really well!
I guess the main reason I haven’t shared the topic is because I feel like any description I can give it doesn’t do the story justice. I haven’t even really dug into the trials of motherhood, a screaming infant, mom guilt, longing for an old life and how hard having a baby can be on a romantic relationship between new parents. While I haven’t actually sat down before now to write a description, I’m writing one for you here today.
My Next Book Description:
Clara Mae is a twenty-one-year-old professional dancer by day, bartender by night. She is loving life, living with her boyfriend, Reg, who is an up and coming chef at a new restaurant in Vancouver. Their carefree and adventurous lifestyle is brought to a near halt when they find out that not only is Clara pregnant—she is in labour.
All within a twenty-four-hour timespan, Clara and Reg become parents, tell their families about the surprise bundle that has joined their family and figure out how to buckle a car seat, what to do with a bassinet and share as many tears as the baby between them within the first week of parenthood.
Navigating motherhood by fire, being thrown in the deep end of the hardest job on the planet, Clara juggles obstacles she never could have seen coming, even once she feels comfortable raising this gift of a baby that she didn’t know she was expecting.
It’s a rough description, but there you have it! Let me know what you think of this new novel of mine, and whether you’d be interested in giving it a read when it’s done. Which might be a few years … just saying. You can also check out the description I wrote for Romilegal: Downtown in this blog post.
I guess now that I’ve written this rough book description, it’s a great way to celebrate my half-goal. As it stands right now—and I haven’t written yet today—my overall wordcount is 28,691 of 50,000.
And that half-goal feels good.
Celebrate the little victories,
Anya
Congratulations Anya! That’s wonderful! I’m very proud of you. 💕keep up the good work!
Thank you!