Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2019

I participated in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for the first time this year.  I've been thinking about it for the past several years, but this year I took on the challenge with a vengeance.  The challenge of NaNoWriMo: write at least 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November.  I thought for sure I would never be able to do it.  I mean, that's a huge amount of words!

Turns out, I could do it!  And did it, I did!  All the way to 83,333 words!

I finished my novel in 30 days.

Oh, there were days when I wanted to give up.  Days when I thought, "This is the worst story ever."  "Why on earth did I start this stupid thing???"  "This sounds terrible!"  "I am the worst writer in the history of the universe!"

But then there were days when I wrote 6,000, 7,000, even 9,000+ words in one day!  Those were the days when I felt excited, elated, over the moon.  Those were the days when I loved my story.  My creation.  My baby.  My characters are my children, and believe me - they have minds of their own and changed my plot line on several occasions!  (Not gonna lie - I've had words with my characters a number of times.  "What on earth are you people doing???  This is NOT the way this was supposed to go!  Are you going to let me in on what it is you think you're up to???")

This experience carried with it a roller coaster of emotions.  Elation, deflation.  Happiness, sadness, anger.  Hurt and frustration, excitement and defeat.  Suspense and anxiety, worry, nerves frayed.  I dreamed my story, lived in it, felt it.  I dealt with kids who couldn't get along, lack of routine, frustration from my husband who just wanted me to get back to being Mom and Wife instead of Writer, got behind on planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Through it all, I stuck with my goal.

And I love my story!

Oh, trust me, it sucks right now.  LOL  I used "said" too often, and "very," and a whole bunch of other words and phrases because I got stuck in a rut as I was trying to get the story out as fast as I could.  Descriptions are sorely lacking.  Conversations sound forced and uninteresting.

But I'm on the revising and editing stage, Round One.  And I know I'll make it better and better and better, until it's perfect.

You know what this whole NaNoWriMo challenge taught me?

I can write a pretty good story.  All this time I thought I wasn't very good at writing, at crafting, at creating.  But I actually am.

This isn't to brag.  My eldest daughter said to me a couple of years ago, "You actually are a really good writer, Mom."  She'd read the opening scene of a story I'd been working on and was sucked into the story.  She's impatiently waiting for me to finish that one.  My mom and husband and kids also love my poetry.

It's also taught me that I can indeed focus on one project at a time.  Normally I flit from one thing to another, never really finishing anything.  But this story?  Oh, was I ever focused!  And still am!

I'll get back to that other story soon.  She still asks about it occasionally.

First, though, I have to finish 

my NaNo project.

I'm a Special Needs Mom

I never realized I was a special needs mom until a year after our first adoption.

It had never occurred to me that our new kidlets were special needs. When I realized one day that they were struggling academically, and moreover, that they had trauma, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

An Aha Moment: they were special needs kids.

Another ton of bricks hit me when I opened my eyes to see that our bio son, now diagnosed as gifted with ADHD (referred to as 2e), is also a special needs kiddo, just on another end of a spectrum.

Whammy number three came when we finally discovered our bio daughter has autism – and were proved correct through formal testing and diagnosis.

Then we adopted 3 supposedly healthy, normal kids. Wrong! Huge special needs issues going on there, both behaviorally and academically.

In the past year we realized our oldest bio daughter is also 2e: gifted and dyslexic.

Another bio son is likely gifted, as well (he’s just like his older brother).

That leaves one bio daughter without any diagnoses at this time, though I do suspect something at play. We’ll likely get a neuropsych eval for her sometime next year.

For those keeping score, that is 9 out of 10 kids with various special needs, all added and/or diagnosed within 4 years.

To say we were thrown for a loop is a major understatement.

We’ve learned so much along this journey, and yet we are far from knowing it all, far from figuring out how to help them all. We’ve learned strategies, we’ve learned burn out, we’ve learned survival and thriving. We’ve attempted some strategies only to find they either weren’t working, required too much time commitment or money, or just didn’t feel right to us. What worked for 1 or 2 kids didn’t necessarily work for the rest, or vice versa. We’ve had ups and downs, bumps and bruises, sunshine and clouds, rain and rainbows, mountains and valleys.

But through it all, we are a family. And God’s love binds us, holds us, forgives us, strengthens us, molds us, leads us. As a family.

And that’s what being a special needs family is all about – leaning on God through each and every day, one day at a time, good or bad. 

God’s got this. 

God’s got you.