Oh, It's December Is It?

Hi, guys! It's Holidailies time again! How about that?

Do you ever have those years when it feels like every month is simultaneously really long, and goes by really fast? December snuck up on me because the last two weeks of November were so crazy, but those individual days consistently had me going, "When is this day EVER going to end?"

I know a lot of people have felt like this, but 2016 for me was one of big-time emotional stressors and absolutely zero time to process any of those emotions because of school. So... if my Holidailies stuff this year deals with some bigger stuff, don't be surprised because I'm taking any opportunity I can to work through some of it. I work through issues best by writing anyway.

For now, it's time for a NaNo recap, which will be short because I only wrote 35,000 words. 10K was my last big assessment for school, because I deemed it basically a novel anyway. That left 25,000 of actual fiction. A good 5,000 of that was the kind of story that exists solely to get the weird stuff out of your head and words flowing so that the more normal good prose can flow unfettered. The remaining 20K was a partial rewrite of my 2013 novel.

Rehashing this story was actually really successful for me. When I left off editing this novel last year, because school took over my life, I had a couple of character and plot issues that were gnawing on me. I just couldn't figure out how to fix everything without a total restructuring of everything. Starting with a fresh rewrite allowed me to pull some of those elements in holistically and also to change the direction of one of the key relationships in a way that fit the characters and the story better. Having some of that figured out gives me a good place to jump in and accomplish a lot when I'm ready to go back to it, which is a wonderful feeling. 

I didn't win NaNo (it was a pretty long shot with school and student teaching), but making so much progress even in a short amount of time was a great feeling. It was better than last year too, which was nice. It also felt great to write some fiction after months of analytical research papers. Like the feeling you get when you get out of the car in the mountains and breathe in the fresh pine scent for the first time. So refreshing, and such a great stress reliever.

Otherwise, my November was basically school. School and then more school. Some soccer (thankfully!). And a little bit of being horrified by society right now, but more on that later.

Now I have to go do my last few things before my LAST CLASS OF THE SEMESTER tonight (I'm not excited at all). 

Until tomorrow.