JOIN: Celebrate This Week - Story Exploratory and NaNoWriMo

Every Saturday, join me as I CELEBRATE This Week 

with Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build.

Last week, while the kids were at swimming lessons, splashing away in the pool, I bought a domain name and set up this blog, a sweet place for me to explore my story, share my love of writing, and hopefully inspire others.

So here we are.

And I'm so happy you are here to celebrate with me today!

Thanks to the remarkable Ruth Ayres, Saturdays are reserved for celebration. I've been celebrating with Ruth on my Teach Mentor Texts blog for a long time. It's definitely a highlight of my week and I'm happy to bring celebration to Story Exploratory. 

To be honest, making the choice to start Story Exploratory didn't just happen on a whim at swimming lessons. I've been thinking dreaming about how I might share more of my story as a writer for a long time. Writing makes me feel empowered and maybe it sounds cheesy but I would love if others would get to feel that way too. Sharing my story seems like the best way to start. 

That doesn't mean it wasn't scary. But I decided that when something feels scary, it doesn't mean you should give up. It means you have a chance to be brave.

So here we are (again).

Starting Story Exploratory is enough to celebrate but I'm starting on another crazy adventure tomorrow too.

Tomorrow is November 1st and that means NaNoWriMo! Just typing it makes me wince but I already signed up so I'm not looking back now. The first time I tried NaNoWriMo was in 2011. I so totally did not win NaNoWriMo...at all. 

Of course, that's part of what freaks me out about doing it now BUT I wouldn't have a super polished novel that I'm querying if I hadn't started it four years ago. 

It seems worth it to start a new draft...to get as far as I possibly can...whether I win NaNoWriMo or not. So I signed up. 

Last night I worked on my beat sheet, which is my super-skeletal outline based on Blake Snyder's Save The Cat. If you're thinking of writing a novel, I definitely recommend it. I've been thinking about these characters for a couple of years and finally getting ready to tell their story is exciting. Plus the story is set at a pool so I get to "live" in summer even though it will be November. How fun is that!?

I'm looking forward to having so much more to celebrate here. If you're doing NaNoWriMo too, please let me know! We can suffer the torture have so much fun together.

And if not, *maybe* next year. ;) 

No, seriously, if not, what are you celebrating? I've got (virtual) confetti at the ready! Thanks for stopping in to explore with me!