Yikes! It's NaNoWriMo Time!

NaNoWriMo, how I love thee – how I hate thee! For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November and thousands of writers, want-to-be writers, and up and coming writers join in the agony…er, I mean fun!  It’s 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel – no revising or editing, just frantic writing. Of course, your final novel can exceed 50,000 words, most do, but that’s the goal for 30 days.

 

At first I was feeling kind of blah about the whole thing. My heart wasn’t in it, although I did have a gist of what I wanted to write. When I reluctantly started on November 1^st, I thought bah-humbug! But then, the creative juices started flowing and I fell in love with my novel and the characters.

 

It centers around two sisters, Abigail (Abby) and Lola. They were eight and ten when their mother left. It wasn’t just that she left – the night she disappeared, the girls found their father cleaning up a bloody bathroom. The girls, especially Lola, are plagued for years with, “Did their mom really leave or did their dad kill her?”

 

Their harsh, unaffectionate dad uses the Bible and religion to control them leaving the sisters to deal with their home life in different ways. Abby becomes promiscuous in high school, while Lola turns to food for comfort. Although she’s bullied and tormented by her classmates, she developed a crush on the popular, Jonathan, the only one who ever stands up for her.

 

The sisters’ journeys take them on a path to find the real God – not the cruel God of their father – and that special someone to love them. They also embark on a quest to find out the truth about their mother’s disappearance. There’s plenty of intrigue and conflict, especially when Jonathan, recently widowed, enters Lola’s life. Lola is now a poised, beautiful, successful business woman with twin daughters when Jonathan appears again.

 

Things get complicated because Lola is positive Jonathan fathered Abby’s son, Dylan. Oh, and a major part of Lola’s story is that after high school, Lola’s dad pays a friend of his – also old enough to be her father – to marry his awkward, homely daughter. “Who else will want you?” he tells her. The marriage only lasted weeks but resulted in the birth of Lola’s twin daughters. Oh, and what really did happen to their mother will surprise you!

 

Lola and Abby are survivors! A must read. I mean, I MUST finish their story. And as far as finding the time for NaNoWriMo, because it is time consuming -- we all know that we make time for the thing we love.