OK, I know I’m cheating here because I’m blogging and not noveling, but I feel that after more than two years of blogging about noveling (and probably more than four years of attempting to novel) that I wanted to offer proof that progress is being made. So here it is:
This is a screenshot of the current word count of my work in progress. Since 50,000 is the benchmark for winning in NaNoWriMo, I was really excited to reach this point. And, though I still have many thousands of words more to finish, it’s all seeming so much more … I don’t know … attainable right now.
Of course, that’s 52,157 raw, unedited and partially disorganized words that I’m half dreading/half thrilled to be able to go back and revise. But it’s something.
And I owe this week’s progress to my super-thoughtful husband who on Wednesday sat down with me and told me that for Mother’s Day, he wanted to give me the weekend to do whatever I wanted to do.
I’ve long held this secret desire to escape for a weekend and do nothing but write in some secluded, inspiring place — so it seemed like he was reading my mind.
While I didn’t write the whole weekend, I did have two long stretches devoted to working on the novel. I kicked off Saturday with a yoga class, I wrote for three hours in a coffee shop then visited one of my best friends in Virginia — who graciously allowed me to invite myself over and crash at her place for the night and also gave me the opportunity to eat a whole dinner without having to clean up a spill or share my plate with an always-mooching 2 year old. I woke up early on Sunday and drove up to the farm and spent another few hours writing here:
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| The desk. |
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| The view. |
Then I came home.
And the girls were so happy to see me — which was the best Mother’s Day gift* they could give me. (All stay-at-home moms need to experience being the one coming home to the delighted shrieks and hugs of their little ones, who apparently have no concept of time because even when you’ve only been gone for a day, they greet you as if you’ve been disappeared without a trace for at least six months).
They gave me these adorable and Pinterest-worthy pieces of art (assisted by their super-crafty dad):
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| Suck it Hallmark. |
And I haven’t even gotten to the best part, which is that the kitchen floor was clean. Like, glistening, freshly scrubbed forget-the-five-second-rule,-that-piece-of-food-can-spend-20-minutes-on-the-floor (unless the dog gets it first)-and-you-can-still-eat-it clean.
It’s glorious.
See, I told you Brad was wonderful. He wrangled two nap-averse kids, crafted, cooked and cleaned the house all in 24 hours.
That’s how you do Mother’s Day.
So … if anyone has suggestions for out-of-this-world Father’s Day gifts, I’m all ears.
* I have to admit, that given all the mom-spending-the-day-with-her-doting-children images on Facebook, goopy Hallmark commercials, and the long line at the Dunkin Donuts Sunday morning, I did feel like a bit of an asshole spending the day on my own. On the other hand … absence does make the heart grow fonder …