Novel Writing Month is Over

Yes, I did it! I officially won NaNoWriMo! The little tree in the picture, stretching itself up to the light in the middle of those massive pines? That's a bit how I feel right now. There's a long way to go but I am so pleased to be able to say, I wrote my 50 000 words. 50 886 so far to be exact. Yes, so far, because the story isn't finished. Yet.

Here are my thoughts on the ups and downs of the NaNoWriMo experience.

The Pluses

• It was amazing to be writing every day.
• I finally got the story that Maya's been pestering me about on and off for over a year written down and nearly finished.
• My family were really supportive.
• I think my kids have finally got it, I'm no longer just mum who is really great and always available and does all this stuff for us, I'm, also that crazy woman who sits in front of a screen for a really long time doing her work - writing. Oh yeah and forgets important things like getting the lunch ready and keeping the fire going (ahem).

The Minuses

• I neglected my poetry, I couldn't do both and I missed it.
• I didn't blog much or journal a lot either, there was just no time.
• I was antisocial, I didn't make any new friends, post on a single NaNoWriMo forum or go to any write-ins. To be fair there weren't any in my area.
• See above about forgotten dinners, fires that went out etc. I really need to learn better time management, yeah and go to bed earlier and get up earlier without waking up my undeniably cute but bothersome two year old sleeping buddy.

There will be time for a little posting now so I'll be showing off how the apple bags turned out and hopefully telling you about all the mending which has been a big theme around here this autumn and will continue to be I imagine with five of us living and working and learning together in this space all the time. And finally a little peek into our library again to see our favourite Christmas books because yes we do start reading them from the beginning of December. On the flip side, there's a moratorium after the 25th and it lasts all through the next year!

Autumn Poem (or not Poem)

Autumn Colours

I was wanting to write a poem about Autumn. I thought about the colours of the leaves drifting slowly down. Persian orange, Bittersweet, Rosewood, Saddle brown. So many names, evoking. There seemed no more than this, a list of tones and hues. It said it all. But a poem is not a list, surely it is something more than Goldenrod, Honey and Papaya, Pearl copper and Fawn? Old gold seems stark alone on the page. And yet, as I read the lists of colours I had carefully gathered, I saw the leaves dancing across the lawn, swept up in a gust of wind, slowly floating down and up, drifting like so many light winged butterflies clustered. When all is said and done, what is a poem but a gathering of words.

Autumn Leaves and a Soup Recipe

At the risk of repeating myself, I love the colours of autumn! I like the crisp freshness in the air and the leaves swirling in the wind like butterflies caught in the air currents.

We collect a lot of those leaves every year. More leaves than I know what to do with. In the past we've made garlands to hang in front of our windows with torn up leaves, whole leaves, wool, felt and coloured paper. We've pressed leaves to stick in the children's nature journals and used them to garnish our seasonal table. Lots of leaves have been ground up into wooden tea pots and teacups to make fairy tisane and leaf cakes. Even more have been strewn across the floor in a way that infuriates me until I remember that I started this whole collecting thing.

This year I've been carefully pressing some of the loveliest leaves myself, Japanese Maple and Wisteria being two of my current favourites. My plan is to make our own inlaid recycled paper with them like this here. Maybe we'll make the sheets into notebooks and gift them for Christmas or maybe they'll just be for us. I don't know yet. This is going to be a big project.

In the meantime their our bouquets of leaves on our kitchen table and a whole bag full waiting for me to press. And the autumn colours have made it into the kitchen too with this amazing Tomato, Red Lentil and Lemon Soup adapted from the Convent Garden Soup Company's Book of Soups. Enjoy.


Lentil, Tomato and Lemon Soup

a good glug of extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
150g (about 2/3 of a cup) red lentils
570ml (about 2.5 cups) vegetable stock
1 x 400g tin of tomatoes
2 teaspoons of tomato purée
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
1 bay leaf
salt and freshly ground black pepper
lemon juice to taste 

Gently fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil until they are softened but not browned, about ten minutes. Add the lentils and stir well. Add the stock and raise the heat to bring to the boil. Skim off any scum. Add the tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, rosemary and bay leaf. Bring back to the boil and then simmer covered for about 20 minutes. Taste, season, fish out the bay leaf and the stem from the rosemary (most of the leaves will have come off). Serve and let each person add their own lemon juice to taste.

Scribbling my way through November

Since starting NaNoWriMo I have to admit I've given up on a lot of other stuff like a tidy house or our monumental laundry pile or being sociable. Because every scrap of my time which doesn't revolve around my three lovely but pretty demanding kids is spent trying to keep on the curve. The curve is the graph I look at daily on my NaNoWriMo dashboard to see how on track I am for completing my 50 000 words by November 30th. Somedays I feel like the gull in the picture sweeping out to sea, my heart swells with the thrill of seeing the numbers. Other days I want to crawl in a hole and howl as it seems I'll never get there. 

Writing the words is not the problem and I suppose I should be really pleased about that. Finding the time to write the words is more complicated. Perhaps if I didn't take out a couple of hours to watch amazing Shakespeare adaptions I'd do better and if I'd said no to playing Carcassone with my sleepless 8 year old I would certainly of got more done today. But you know it's okay. I'm writing pretty much every day and I'm having a lot of fun and even though I know today I'm below the curve I can turn it around tomorrow and I'm pretty proud of my nearly 20 000 words done so far.