Everything changes

One of my favorite sayings is "Change is the only constant in the Universe".  And recently it's been particularly true for my life.  Fundamental things I thought would never - I mean NEVER - change, are changing.

Monday morning I got up at five o'clock.  That's a time people usually have to remind me happens more than once in a day because I'm guaranteed to be sleeping through the AM version.  Why did I ON PURPOSE drag myself out of bed that early?  On a Monday?  For yoga.  YOGA!  And guess what... I found out how much I like to work out in the morning.  I felt so amazing all day.  Yes, part of that was because I did yoga which always leaves me feeling amazing.  But there was more.  I had no anxiety about when I was going to fit exercise into my crazy day.  No lamenting about the day having slipped by, taking my best laid plans with it, and falling into bed without having worked out.  Nope.  Instead, I'd already done it before I would normally have been out of bed.  Brilliant! And the best part: I had so much energy all day that I didn't even feel sleep deprived.  Monday mornings now mean yoga at six o'clock AM.

Today I realized that subconsciously I've been changing my night owl activities all week.  I'm slowly training myself to go to bed a tad bit earlier so I can eventually wake up early and run before work.  Because, let's face it, my days of working out during work have been gone for at least eight months with no promise of returning.  And that half marathon is just getting closer by the day...

Then there's my writing...  No, no, I'm still doing it.  BUT, I think I've been writing in the completely wrong genre.  My first novel, poised for completion of the first draft after five long, grueling, frustrating, learning years is an urban fantasy.  Its the genre I have typically read the most so it must be the one I will write in, too.  Right?  Except that both of those stories I've got brewing in my head are NOT urban fantasy.  They are mainstream fiction, character-driven stories.  And I'm so much more excited about them!  So much so that I haven't forced myself to write the conclusion of the first one yet because every time I sit down to do it, I find myself thinking more about the next ones and the writing is crap.  I refuse to abandon my first baby until I've written "The End" and have at least the rough story down on paper.  THEN I can put it away in a drawer to pull out and re-work someday when I've got several more under my belt and could truly make an urban fantasy work.

On the home front, Hubby found out he has off-the-chart cholesterol so the entire family is now eating healthier.  My carnivorous husband hasn't eaten a cheeseburger in almost three weeks.  Even Big Sister has embraced wheat bread, although I'm certain her BFF who always thanks me prolifically for having white bread when she eats over will be sad.  The best part:  I'm no longer the odd one out when fixing meals because now I just fix what I'm eating for everyone.

So while I still can't completely explain it, man am I loving this cycle of change...

The NaNo that wasn't

It's happened before... getting to the end of November and not winning NaNoWriMo. But this time was different. I had prepared for this one far more than any before. I had a fully-plotted story - albeit rough and very high level - with characters and motivations and all the things that I didn't have the times before when I didn't win.  Yet I still stalled at just over twelve thousand words.

Yes, I know... twelve thousand words is more than some people write in an entire month - myself included some months.  But my goal was fifty thousand and it was attainable.  I was even ahead of the word count after the first weekend.

So what happened?

Well, there was that pesky pulmonary embolism I was diagnosed with on November 1st.  But in reality I could have labeled that any of a number of things.  And all those things can be lumped together and called "life".  The lesson I'm taking away from this month of best laid plans, derailed by no control of my own, is that life happens.  You can either let it get you down or you can look at the bright side and take away whatever good there is to take from the situation.  My health had to come first this year; and while I don't have a purple winners bar at the end of the month, I still worked every time I had the energy to do so.

One of the biggest unspoken fears I've been grappling with as I sprint *cough* crawl to the finish line of the first draft of my first novel is WHAT'S NEXT?  What if I can't come up with another good idea.  What if I spent five years figuring out how to write a novel, finally finish one and then that's it.  I'll never have another idea.

I didn't need to worry, though.  While I didn't have the energy or the time to write amid all the craziness of my life during November, I did have ideas brewing.  And now I'm pushing myself to finish this monumental, FIRST novel so I can get to the TWO other stories I've got to write now.  Hello, I'm Terra and I'm a writer regardless of whether I won or lost this year's NaNoWriMo.