Back in the Saddle

After taking a brief (alright, almost two year) writing break, I'm back at it again. I signed up for NaNoWriMo as a jumping off point. Yes, after not writing anything more substantial than Facebook statuses for almost two years, I thought it would be a good idea to try to write 50K in one month.

A bit of back story here, for those of you who don't know, I am disabled. I was a working disabled person up until August of this year. I stopped writing because my body couldn't handle the strain of work and writing. During the last year of my employment, I was basically working and sleeping. All my free time was spent resting up and preparing my body for work. It wasn't much of a life. In August I was fired for absenteeism related to my disabilities. I wasn't prepared for this. I wasn't able to collect unemployment and my body can't handle work anymore, so I'm currently fighting for my disability.

I won NaNoWriMo for the first time in all the years I've been attempting it. I did it by writing roughly 2K words a day, taking breaks for rest and restoration. It was hard, but I did it. The resulting story isn't pretty, but it has a beginning, middle, and end. There is conflict and partially developed characters. For my return to the literary world, I would call it a success. My goal now is to keep up with my daily writing habits. So far, since November has ended, I haven't written much. The November WIP is on hold till after January when I will attempt to edit it. I am currently plotting and outlining the next book in the series. The story was too big for just one volume. I think it is interesting, but I'm not sure the rest of the world will.

I set a goal for the next year. It is to edit my story, write a query letter, and submit to at least one agent. Sounds simple right, but this is a goal that will require much work. Writing is tough. Getting what I see in my head to translate to the page can be a challenge. November's WIP is chock full of tell versus show and possible plot holes.

As I ride off into the sunset, I vow not to stop until I can't do anymore. I will die telling my stories whether anyone else wants to read them or not.