I nanowrimo. Do you? Here's an excerpt...

About a month ago, I signed up to participate in nanowrimo; or National Novelist Writers Month which takes place every November.  Since I am not a novelist, I suppose that's why I had never heard of it prior to this year.  Anyway, I hesitated for a day or two before I signed up for it, wondering if I could carve out the time to write.  The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.  Although to be honest, the real goal is to get people in the habit of writing everyday.  I am terrible at this. I will go for days, even weeks writing at least something each day and then I set aside my journals and don't write anything for weeks or months.  Sometimes, I even have the need to write, but I don't.  To non-writers, it sounds weird, even sick or nerdish when I say I need to write the way I need to breathe.  But, it is true.  When I am writing, I feel better because I have processed and expressed something that I am sometimes not able to articulate unless I have the outlet to write.  Sometimes I even need to write so that I can fully understand any given situation; writing gives me clarity.

Anyway, as of today my "novel" is currently sitting at 17,000 words.  I am well ahead of the goal of where I need to be to complete the challenge and I am happy about that. I hope the the second half of my book comes as easily as the first half did, but I have some concerns that I may bog down at some point.  I'm fervently praying that doesn't happen though as this "book" has felt like a purging of my soul at times.  I hope I can finish it because even if it turns out to be utter crap, not worth the paper it won't be printed on, I still needed to write it.  For me. And for all of you unsuspecting souls that I will foist it upon whether you want it to be foisted upon you or not.  Just kidding.  Sorta.

If you are still reading this drivel and you want to read even more drivel (and also read the word drivel one more time since I included it in the first paragraph of my book because apparently it is my new overused word of the month), I invite you to read what I believe will be the prologue for my book, "Moving Mountains".  Keep in mind that the challenge is to get the words written, it is not for editing during this month.  Editing comes after the goal is met.  So, this is very, very rough.  There may be spelling errors (gasp!) and other literary mayhem (horrors!).  I did not bother to run spell checks, let alone a grammar check before I saved my writing.  Believe me, as a "trying to recover perfectionist", this little bit of not-editing-as-I-go, has been extremely challenging for me. I have overcome it for the most part by writing new chapters each day so that I am not inclined to go back and read and fix mistakes from the day before.  There will plenty of time for me to do that after Thanksgiving!

Here's the prologue for "Moving Mountains". 

Matthew 17:20 So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

Prologue

Call me Nathan! Nathan Isaac Bradbury to be exact, but you can call me Nate if you want to. That was my thinly veiled attempt to reference Hemingway's "Moby Dick". Please do not ask me why I chose to start my story like this because the only version of "Moby Dick" that I ever read was the "Cliff Notes for Dummies" version of the "Cliff Notes" not to mention the fact that I am no Hemingway; a statement with which you will soon agree if you are still reading my story at this point. Maybe we already have agreed on that point, that's up to you to decide. Unlike Hemingway, I do not own any six toed cats. In fact, I don't even really care for cats of the five toed variety, so it is unlikely that there will be any felines making appearances in this story. I can promise that there is a dog though; maybe a couple of dogs, so dog people will want to continue with me. Cat people should feel free to continue with me too as long as we can agree to disagree over whether the dog or the cat is the superior animal companion.

Hemingway and I are alike in one regard though: I have had the pleasure of escaping to Key West (a trip about which you can read in this story if you choose to embark upon this great adventure I have set in my mind to tell you about) and I can certainly understand why someone would want to make that tropical island their home. The idea of living in an area where one cannot tell where the blue of the sea stops and the azure blue of the sky starts, is comforting to me. In my version of Key West, the temperature is always a balmy 80 degrees, the tropical breeze gently ruffles the hair as I sit beside the ocean with an endless supply of journals and pens (all given to me free of course) with which to record my story for all of posterity. Oh, and I have a lifetime supply of key lime pie at my disposal as well. And since this is a dream we are talking about, my key lime pie does not pack on unnecessary weight. This idyllic lifestyle is admittedly, quite intriguing to me. At least until the fury of a hurricane interrupts my storybook existence in my daydream, scatters all my journal pages into the ocean and I get a key lime pie blown into my face with gale force wind. Then it's not so pretty anymore. Plus, it hurts. The key lime pie is still tasty though.

See here though! I've only just started my story and I have already digressed! Maybe the make believe hurricane decimating my journal pages was being kind to the general literary public when it blew my deepest thoughts all over the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe it was Mother Nature's way of protecting unsuspecting folks from having to read this drivel! At any rate, if you are still with me, Nathan Isaac Bradbury, in Hebrew my names mean "he gave and he laughs" so I tell people that I give laughs, although it wasn't always this way. There was a time when I forgot how to laugh.

Once upon a time, there was something that happened in my life that arrived on my doorstep with all of the fanfare and devastation of a hurricane. Unlike epic atmospheric events though, no one thought to tell me disaster was on it's way and I had no time to prepare myself for it. In the way that a hurricane can flatten buildings that have stood for years with no regard to their historical significance or the people who used to reside within the four walls of their newly destroyed home, this event threatened to drown me in the depths of utter despair and a pit of self loathing; quite literally, it nearly ushered in the utter destruction of me to say nothing of my sweet wife Lizzy B. It became a terribly dark time in my life and I was unable to make anyone laugh. I couldn't even see the sun on a bright summer day, let alone imagine the type of island life that Hemingway was blessed to live. Something terrible happened to me that day, it changed my life forever and almost stole the joy and laughter right out of my life forever. As surely as a hurricane claims it's victims, whether they are human, animal or material items, I floundered and nearly succumbed to the force of one mistake. And it wasn't even a mistake really. It was an unavoidable accident. Because believe me, if I had seen it coming, I would have run for high ground at the first inkling that something was wrong. I would not have waited for the governor to tell me it was time to evacuate.

Though in the middle of trying to recover from Hurricane Bel Air, I discovered something: that even when it seemed like God had left me alone to wallow in my mess and find my own way out of it, at that very moment He was reaching out His mighty and powerful hand to help me up, brush me off and set my feet upon the solid rock of His foundation. I discovered that when life's circumstances have beaten me down so much that I have to look up to see the ground, that God is right there with me. All I have to do is have faith the size of a mustard seed and I can, well, move mountains.

Giving Thanks for Laughter

I turned the calendar page and suddenly the end of the year frenzy is about to engulf us all once again.  Not me.  Not this year.  With each passing year I become more and more disgusted, discouraged and disengaged from the holiday rush.  I love having my family for Thanksgiving dinner and I love having them over for Christmas.  I do NOT love the commercialization that has consumed our country and I do my dead level best not to succumb to it.  This year I am even more resolved not to give in. 

This year, we will once again enjoy the opportunity to gather as a family in our home.  We will eat and laugh, play some games with the gusto of the most rabid of NFL fans, laugh some more at each other, at ourselves and at ridiculous things we will make up, not to mention stories from that past that may or may not have an element of truth to them.  We will probably eat again.  And did I happen to mention we will laugh?

That's because a wiser person than me once said, "laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone."  Sometimes, it is important to weep with someone else.  Empathy should not be a lost art in our society.  When someone is truly hurting often there are no words of comfort. But when you look into the face of your dearest friend and see them share the burden of your heart through their tears or the pain in your own eyes reflected in theirs, it is somehow comforting.

But I digress.

Laughing though?  It makes everything seem somehow more bearable. I have laughed at some absolutely inappropriate times and felt bad about it.  That is, until someone else joins in and suddenly a terrible burden is somehow made lighter if only for the few minutes our minds were not fixated on it.

November.  Thanksgiving.  There is much to be thankful for and laughter, even irreverent laughter is one of them.

I have tried to instill in my kids the sense that being thankful isn't just something we do one day out of the year; it should be a mindset, a way of life, something that we look for each day.  I don't know if I've been fully successful with this yet, but I sure do have hope when I hear one of them say, "Mom, look at the sky!  Isn't the sunset beautiful?  It's so cool that God reminds us of Himself with the colors of the sky."

Indeed it is kiddo.

And then I say a prayer for thankfulness for God's goodness and faithfulness.