I learned of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2014. I’d wanted to write a novel since, maybe, forever. And NaNoWriMo was a challenge – write 50,000 words in a single month.

I’m ADHD, so challenges like this really get my dopamine rushing.

I signed up for the challenge and started writing a story called The Internal Struggles of a Budding Serial Killer. I didn’t get far before I faded. It seemed like a good idea, but I really had no clue how to write a novel.

Not to mention understanting the inner workings of a serial killer’s mind – in spite of having an addition to the ID Channel!

I’d written a ton of papers, poems, blog posts and even short stories. But a novel – well that was a very different beast altoghether.

I went into it thinking it was a very VERY long short story. It’s not. Not in any way.

Five Years of No Attempts

I spent the next five years dreaming of the NaNoWriMo challenge, but I really didn’t know what to write. Or even how to start.

I loved writing, but I couldn’t come up with a plot. My favorite non-fiction work that I wrote was a short story that paralleled John Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” It was a story of the Greek Gods pulling the strings on Cheever’s character.

I loved it because it followed Cheever’s plot. I could be creative. I could write. And I didn’t have to bother with what came next. I merely followed what Cheever wrote.

I earned an A on it in an undergrad literature class.

If I only had a plot outlined for me, I thought, I could write it.

Memoir Stories

I would often recount different stories of my past with friends and family. Most of them were funny, or at least entertaining. I asked myself, Why not write MY story?

After all, memories are stories. They have a plot and characters all built in. You don’t have to invent any of it. You just write it down.

In October 2020 I started a list of these stories – just a title or one-sentence summary. Things like “The time we ran away,” or “The time Tammy thought I got shot,” or “The time I sang the ‘blow-job song’ in the car.”

On November 1, I started writing.

I kept up with the 1,667 words per day from November 1 through November 11, 2020, writing early each weekday morning and anytime I could on the weekends.

I got just about 20,000 words in when my world shifted.

Mid-November Lay Off

On November 11, I was laid off. The lay off created a shift in my thinking (aka panic) and all I could focus on was finding a new job. I’d only been given one month of severance, with no compensation for health insurance. So finding a job was the top priority.

When I did find a job, Novemeber was over. I didn’t write any more – on the memoirs or anything. I didn’t want to “waste” writing in a month that wasn’t November.

In late 2021, I found a different (and better) job and was just starting it when NaNoWriMo came around. I was so focused on that new job, I decided to skip NaNoWriMo that year.

I promised myself I’d try for the next November.

I was still having fun at my job in October 2022. By the time I thought about NaNoWriMo, it was too late. There was too much going on to give me time to write the whole 50,000 words. I, again, promised myself I’d try for the following year.

That same routine repeated in 2023.

Finally, in 2024, I remembered NaNoWriMo in time to plan and get mentally ready. I would continue on my memoir stories.

Another Attempt at Memoir Writing

The rules for NaNoWriMo are that you have to write ALL 50k in the month of November. I had about 20,000 words of the memoir already written. I needed enough memoir stories for another 50,000 words.

I updated my list of memories in Dabble – brainstorming everything I could think of that ever happened in my youth. I even solicited friends and family members for memories.

I was ready to write.

I hit at least 1,667 words each day in November and finished on November 30, 2024. After 10 years of wanting to “win” NaNoWriMo, I finally did it!

I bought the t-shirt and the stickers. I printed the certificate. I felt so cool!

Months and Months of Zero Writing

I relished in my coolness. And then continued relishing in it. And then relished in it even more.

The most I did with my NaNoWriMo draft for eleven months was have a friend or family member read a story or two.

But I didn’t edit any of them. And I didn’t write any more of them.

Another Lay Off

In July 2025 I was alerted that I’d be laid off “probably some time in October.”

This hit me as, “You can take November to just write!” I knew I’d be getting 3 months severance, so using November to write instead of panicking about getting a job would be awesome. Plus it would dampen my “get a job” panic – which was a bonus!

But almost all of my memoir stories were written. And it was at 70k words. I wasn’t sure I had another 50k words worth of stories.

Maybe it’s time for an actual novel, I thought. After all, NaNoWriMo stands for National NOVEL Writing Month, not National Memoir Story Writing Month.

But still, I was unsure if I could even come up with a plot.

I remedied this with two things:

1. I signed up for the Dabble’s 60 Day Novel Writing challenge that would begin on October 1.
2. I decided to build my novel around a story I read as a kid: What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew.

The first would, hopefully, teach me the things I needed to know about writing a novel.

The second gave me a plot.

I was ready to try the challenge again – this time with a novel!

This is from a set of memoir stories I wrote during NaNoWriMo in 2024.

For years, I couldn’t read. I don’t mean that I didn’t have the ability to read words. I mean I could not read over 20 words strung together before falling asleep.

At the age when we were building our vocabularies via reading, Linda, Tammy and Theresa were reading teen romance novels. Now, before you puke (or smile with reminiscence), I only followed suit because that’s just what I did. As a loyal follower of the Cult of Linda, what she read, I read. And apparently I flew under the radar enough that the teachers never noticed this and encouraged me to find my genre.

Novel after novel would show up in their hands, waiting for their voracious eyes to soak in the words. And I would take their sloppy seconds.

Theresa had just finished inhaling P.S. I Love You and it came to me next. It was the funnest title of all these books that we read. Or that they read and I tried to read. And I was excited about starting it.

Home it went with me, stacked on my math and history books, and on the bus. I had planned to read it on the way home, but there was too much activity happening that was worth paying attention to at the back of the bus. The big kids were playing freeze-out, so we joined in. We got in trouble, but only with Mrs. Gray’s bobble-headed, high-pitched squeal of a sad admonishment.

When it was finally Linda’s turn off the bus, I looked for my books under the seat. My stop was after hers.

As was par, my books had slid back and forth under many seats and so needed collecting. I worked my flight attendant skills as I went from seat to seat to find and recover them. Math book – found. Corresponding folder – found. History book – took a while longer to find, but it was with its folder friend. And we were coming to a stop at my house.

My little brother was exiting the bus, so I shuffled quickly to the front to not get the passive aggressive closed door treatment that Mrs. Gray would give anyone slow on exiting. The bus wasn’t 20 feet down the street before I realized I’d left P.S. I Love You on the bus!

If this was today, I’d have gone home, googled it and been able to read at least the first few pages with the Amazon.com “Look Inside” feature. But this wasn’t today. And computers were things that filled a room five times the size of my house. And even if it had my book on it, it could only hold half of the book.

So there I was, moping down the driveway toward the house. Kicking myself for not retrieving the novel from the bus floor. How was it I could find math and history books, but leave the most valuable book behind? I glared at the textbooks in my arms. Had it not been for them running all over the floor of the bus, and probably kicking my novel around while they did it, I would have that lovely piece of prose to read tonight. I fumed right past the door until I hit the TV.

“Good Times” was on, and that was good enough to take my mind off my lost book. Unfortunately, “Electric Company” was next, which I wasn’t the biggest fan of, but some of the non-plot-lines held my interest to help me escape my pain.

Then it was homework, dinner and bath, which I had to cram in so quickly that I didn’t have time to be angered at the textbooks again. And with the apple and milk mom brought to my room, and her gentle pre-sleep conversation, I was ready to put it all behind me and start over in the morning.

My vivid, lucid dreams that night involved the missing novel. In one scene, I arrived on the bus only to discover Mrs. Gray had cleaned it stem to stern, removing everything, including my book. When asked about it, she merely said that everything went into the trash.

In another segment of my nightly entertainment, I got on the bus, right after Linda, to find her hunched, knees against the seat in front of her, three quarters through the book. She refused to give it up and said that she was going to read it twice more before considering sharing it with me.

I woke and shared my nightmares with Mom – to which she responded by telling me I was just reminding myself today to not forget it. It was Friday, and to forget it once more meant a whole weekend of this agony.

Breakfast was the abomination of Rice Krispies Treats we called “pinch” – 86 the Rice Krispies and substitute bran flakes, corn flakes and Total cereal. It was an abomination, but it was good (we still make it today – not for our kids – too much sugar – but for ourselves). I ate a couple of handfuls and took a swig from one of the community milk glasses, and headed out the door.

I saw the bus stop at Linda’s house, so I hustled it down the driveway, Little Brother yelling from the bus stop to hurry. He still hadn’t gotten the timing down on the bus and the walk.

I entered the bus with my fingers crossed. I tried to play it cool, so I walked down to Linda’s seat and sat. We greeted each other as I put my math and history books on the floor. I casually and stealthily bent a little farther over to see down the length of the bus. I spotted it! I wouldn’t have been better had I seen a brick of gold bullion. I got up quickly, but with casual ease, and rocked my way toward the back of the bus where it was.

Our stops were close to the start of the route, so there were few, if any, kids back there. I leaned over and picked it up.

When I got back to our shared seat, Linda noticed the book. “Did you finish it?”

I so wished I didn’t have to actually say this, “No, I forgot it last night on the bus.”

But I got lucky. She only commiserated with me.

She was already reading a different novel than the one I saw her with yesterday, and since the bus ride to school is infinitely less interesting that the bus ride home, we both scootched down in the seat, knees on the seat in front of us and commenced reading.

I was three pages into the book when I began fading. The story held my interest longer than most books – usually it was a page in when I started falling asleep. But I held the book on my knees and closed my eyes for a few minutes. The rocking of the bus continued to lull me to sleep and by the time we were at school, I was no further along.

We rotated through the first handful of classes before lunch with no time for reading – but enough time to pass notes, of course.

We sat down with our trays to enjoy lunch when the conversation turned to the rotation of novels between us. I admitted I was on page 3 when Tammy said, “I’m ready to read that one – can I take it home tonight and I’ll bring it back to you in the morning?”

This was the typical refrain. It was annoying at first. But after a while it became depressing. I wanted to read fast. Or at least faster than one page a night. But it didn’t seem to be in the cards.

But then the genre of our group turned to the creepy – V. C. Andrews. I had already mostly given up the idea that I was actually going to read books, but when the lunchtime accidental reading group began reviewing and discussing Flowers in the Attic, I was intrigued. There was less of the mushy teen romance and more of the weird and obscure bloodletting and incest.

Once that novel had made the rounds, and there was no danger that I would get the borrow-for-one-night treatment, I requested it. Amazingly, I read 20 pages or so each night before fading. And some nights I stayed up for hours reading it.

I finished it in two weeks and was ready for another. My Sweet Audrina was the next one we had from that author, although they were intermingling them with random romances. I picked up Audrina and read it as diligently as Flowers.

Over the next many years, I read another three or four novels. Almost none of which were purely for pleasure.

Fast forward a few years to 1990 when I was working at IDM Controls. My friend and unofficial “big sister,” Debbie, was reading The Stand by Steven King. I noticed how large the book was. “It is SO good,” she opined. “This is the second time I’ve read it. If you want to borrow it, you can after I’m done.”

I explained to her that I don’t read novels.

“He also has short stories – I have a book of those if you want to borrow that,” she offered.

Now short stories I can do. The concise way an author will introduce, engage, explain and conclude a tale in a short story has always amazed me. I had even taken to writing some short stories myself.

I gladly accepted her offer and looked forward to this new author.

The next day, as promised, she brought me the Different Seasons anthology. I took it home, wondering how I was going to find it.

I finished half of it that night.

The next day I went to her, “I’ll try reading The Stand when you’re done,” I bravely said. I was so excited. Apparently I was a reader – I just hadn’t found my preferred genre.

Writing

I’ve been writing since high school when my best friend and I wrote An Ode to Snot. Maybe someday, if you’re lucky (or maybe unlucky) I’ll share that.

But for now, just know that was the starting point.

I’ve loved the written word, well, forever. I’m not a fast reader – in fact, I’m a slow reader. I say the words out loud in my head when I read.

But I love the structure. I love the possibilities. And I love putting stuff to paper.

My degrees are in math, but I DO have an undergraduate minor in English. So it seems like I knew, even back then, that I wanted to study and focus on the written word.

Why now?

I’ve started (and failed) the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge a few times. Only last year – their final year, it turns out – did I complete it.

I wrote > 50,000 words of a memoir!

I picked memoir because it was “easy.” I knew the characters. I knew the stories. It was just a matter of getting them out of my soul and on paper. Ahem… “on paper” meaning on the screen, of course.

After the challenge (and my success), I let it lie dormant. Until I got the word in July that I was being laid off “sometime in the next few months.”

I flopped around for a while – mostly in denial. The closer a “few months” got, the more I started wondering what I was going to do.

Find a job? Of course. I have two kids – and kids are expensive.

But what else? Is there something I want to do in the core of my being?

As I was avoiding the realities of life, I saw an email from DabbleU in my inbox inviting me to join a challenge. (I’d rewarded my NaNoWriMo accomplishment last year with the lifetime subscription to DabbleWriter, a writing app. Again, clearly I knew this was something I longed to do.)

So I joined the DabbleU 60-Day Novel Challenge!

Why write a novel?

Looking at a novel from the outside, it looks like a crap-ton of complex, weird, intricate stuff that magically all comes together in the end.

But it’s not rocket science. Maybe I could give it a go. After all, I’ve written over 500 blog posts on my math blog. And lots of people think math is hard (they’re wrong – but that’s covered in the math blog) – so if I can do math, why can’t I write a novel?

After all, my current focus was alternately pouting and freaking out about losing my job, and (sort-of) looking for a new job. I clearly had the bandwidth to write a novel (famous last words, right?).

Maybe I could calm my freak-out moments with some writing. I have full access to DabbleU with my super-amazing-unlimited-everything-lifetime subscription to DabbleWriter, and they have templates and courses and tons of resources.

What better time than now to try?

What’s it about?

I needed a novel idea. (Yes, pun intended.)

A long long time ago I wrote a story that paralleled John Cheevers’s “The Swimmer.” I really enjoyed taking a story and writing something adjacent.

That made me think about a book I read as a kid: What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew.

I bought it for Kindle and read it. Even with my slow reading ability, it only took a few hours.

This just might work…

I could write a story of the two little girls as grownups!

Why a website?

Those goobers over at DabbleU have sucked me in! I’ve never felt so exhilarated, excited, panicked, scared and IN as I have these past few weeks.

I’ve watched the lessons, read the articles and done the homework.

Then I started on the extra courses.

Apparently when you finish writing a novel, the world doesn’t just show up at your door for a copy. Go figure!

And the first step of all the “business of writing” is getting your author platform up and going.

Thank goodness – something I know a bit about!

So that’s where you are right now. My first step in the business of writing.

What’s next?

Apparently I’m on a journey. One that I didn’t expect. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited.

And I’d love for you to join me.