November Writing Month Has Died

Now that I have your attention, let me explain what I mean by the title of this blog.If you’re active on social media and follow any authors, you may have noticed that about mid November, writers across the board stopped posting about their. . . I’m going to call it November writing month because I don’t want to be associated with N@ N0 Wri M0 when that term is searched (and hopefully that’s enough to hide me 🤞 ).If you’re not active and you have no idea what I’m talking about, two things happened. One, some people in power over at the organization were involved in what’s called grooming of minors. I’ll leave it at that because it’s disgusting. Two, some other people over at the organization decided to identify with ostriches and bury their heads in the sand instead of taking responsibility and handling the issue. That’s my understanding of the little research I did. I didn’t go further because all I needed to see was the word “grooming” and I was done. You can do your own research if you’d like to know more; I’m sure it’s everywhere now. For several days after the news broke, some authors, including myself, tried to save our November writing month by still posting about our word count for the month because being in the middle of that, we didn’t want to lose all of our momentum. I also edited what posts I could to remove myself from the project. Even though I’d always unofficially participated, meaning I never signed up with the organization and connected my name to theirs, I still felt the need to edit my posts to erase any connection between myself and them.Well, it all fizzled out mighty quick. Within days, I saw nothing anywhere about that organization’s name nor anything about anyone’s monthly writing count. It’s kind of sad, really. The mission behind it, which if I remember correctly has been around since the late 1990s, is actually an incredible feat. To gather and join so many people across the world into one project. . . it’s pretty remarkable. But with the deplorable actions of a few people [in positions of power], the entire organization is probably going to be wiped from existence.Let me sidestep for a moment, I have an opinion. First of all, I always thought it strange to have this kind of challenge during the holidays. As if we aren’t stressed and overloaded enough, let’s throw on having to make sure we write a minimum of 1,667 words every. single. day. [That was the premise, to write 50,000 words in one month.]That might not seem like much in a day, but let’s see you do that every day for 30 days. . . 🥴 It’s not easy. Because. . . life. I love the concept behind it. It’s to motivate us to sit our butts down in the chair and write. It’s way too easy to let the days get away from us, distractions pile up, and before you know it, you haven’t written all week. So, again, I love the idea behind it. But for the love of all that is in the universe, why during one of the busiest months of the year? But I digress.  Now, unfortunately, my own writing took a backseat about a week later. We took the entire week off and went hiking in the Smokies for a few days before heading over to family for the holiday, then I had a release date at the end of the month. . .#shamelessplug  The third and final book in the Beckett Brothers Ranch series, Karter, released on Nov 26! Grab your copy here.. . . and all the late-stage coordination and marketing for that, sheesh! So needless to say, even though I had almost 15,000 words written, even though the short romance I was writing was two-thirds of the way complete, even though I was in a serious groove with my writing, the news that broke kind of broke my momentum plus the things above, and I haven’t written in almost two weeks. 😢So instead of writing my story, I’m doing what a lot of us writers like to do. . . productive procrastination. I’m writing a blog post and explaining it to you. 🤣Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve written one, and I thought what better way to get back into it than to explain why November will forever be changed in the writing world. But as sad as that outcome is, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re writers, and we write! We write so you can read. We write to calm our thoughts. We write to get the stories out of our head and onto the page. So. . .May your writing get better every day.May your TBR pile grow with earnest.Here’s to forgetting the past and moving towards the future! 🥂Keep on keeping on, Beauties!Until next time,xoxo