December. The final month of the year (and, oh, what a year it’s been). The onset of winter. The month in which thoughts turn to hibernation and planning for the future.

But before we get there, let’s look back at November 🙂

Black and Indigenous lives matter. All lives cannot matter until Black and Indigenous lives matter.

I’m so grateful that Trump did not get re-elected.

Now is the time to heal and to focus on defeating covid.

Pandemic life

Even in Canada, we’re seeing huge numbers of daily infections in three of our ten provinces. The good news is that vaccines are in the process of being approved by various national health organizations and that the initial roll-out of vaccines to long-term care facilities and front-line/essential workers should begin soonish. Exact timeframes are dependent upon approval, as they should.

In Sudbury, we have only five active cases right now. This is not to say that we should ease restrictions. We’ve only done as well as we have because, for the most part, we’ve adhered to public health guidelines. Let’s keep it up!

I’m still happily working from home, though in a new position. I can honestly say that Instructional Designer has been my goal for over ten years now. I’m only one week into the position, but so far, so fabulous 🙂

Wear your masks, maintain physical distance, wash your hands, and get your flu shots as soon as you can.

Mom is doing well. Yesterday, we started letting Torvi visit again. Mom’s missed T and T’s missed Gammie. Phil also made pancakes with blueberry sauce. Things are slowly getting back to normal, though we have made the decision not to get together with the rest of the family for Christmas. It’ll just be the three of us, well four with the dog.

The month in writing

I’ll redirect you to my weekly posts for the specifics: NaNoWriMo 2020 week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4.

As a summary/reminder, I participated in NaNoWriMo as a NaNo rebel this year, revising the latest draft of Reality Bomb. I hit 50k words revised on Nov 20^th and my personal goal of 60K words revised three days later. Though I finished the month off with 79,819 words revised (133% of goal), I didn’t quite finish the draft. Three more days and I crossed the ultimate finish line.

I promised to let you know the overall word count reduction. The draft started out as a sprawling 120,090-word … sprawl. My goal was to cut 30k words off the draft for a lean 90-ish k. That didn’t happen. I only cut 14,225 words, but I have since reviewed where all the plot points fell and have identified where the bulk of the remaining cutting needs to focus. Between the mid-point and the third plot point. We’ll see if I can’t cut the remaining 15,775 this month. Ambitious? Yes. Possible? Again, yes. I’ll settle for 100k, though. No pressure 😉

I only managed 2,932 words of my 5,000-word blogging goal, or 59%, but considering how well I did with RB, I’m good with that.

Filling the well

Despite hitting peak zoom capacity in October at SiWC online, I had already signed up for a number of events and courses in November. It was a rather full month. Again.

On Thursday nights, except for the 26^th, I had the ongoing series of lectures from Free Expressions including one by Christopher Vogler on archetypes. I had also registered for a Writing the Other workshop on diverse narrative structures with Henry Lien, which I enjoyed quite a bit. That was for four weeks starting on Nov 4^th.

Wordstock Sudbury 2020 followed the trend of conferences moving online and was from the 5^th to the 7^th. I attended four sessions, including one by Robert J. Sawyer.

While I did attend an online event for Candas Jane Dorsey and her new book, The Adventures of Isabel, and attended another workshop sponsored by Jane Friedman by Tiffany Yates Martin, I registered for but failed to attend three other events. I just did not have the spoons. Plus, I had the Canadian Authors Association AGM to attend which was a conflict.

Other than walking the dog (and taking pictures), visiting Mom in the hospital, and then taking care of her once she was home, there have been no family get togethers, and I only left the house for appointments.

What I’ve been watching and reading

In the viewing category, I only have three entries this month.

Phil and I watched the second season of The End of the Fucking World. It wasn’t quite as wackadoo as the first. James, the nascent psychopath, was shot at the end of the first season and is initially paralyzed. He has a long road to recovery and, in the middle of it, Alyssa’s mother shows up and asks James to write Alyssa a dear Jane letter.

Alyssa decides she has nothing better to do except marry a nice chap to get away from her crazy family. Enter Bonnie, who was obsessed with Clive (the actual serial killer that James kills to save Alyssa in season one) to the point that she committed vehicular homicide for him. Upon her release from prison, Bonnie decides to hunt down and kill James and Alyssa for killing her beloved Clive. Hijinx ensue.

We also watch the first season of Truth Seekers. Nick Frost is mild-mannered broadband installer Gus by day, and paranormal investigator by night. Simon Pegg is his slightly weird boss. Malcolm McDowell is his dad (again, slightly weird). It was fun. I recommend.

And then, I watch Trickster, the CBC series based on Eden Robinson’s novel Son of a Trickster. Awesome. There were several deviations from the novel, but adaptation often works like that. All Indigenous cast and crew. They did an amazing job. Because I want you to both read the book and watch the series, I’ll say no more. You can find it on CBC’s streaming service, Gem.

I read four books in November.

The first is S.A. Chakraborty’s The Empire of Gold. A fitting end to the trilogy. Everyone gets their fitting ending, though often, not in they way they envisioned. Loved.

Then I read Your Brain is a Time Machine by Dean Buonomano. It’s about psychology and neuroscience and how our brains perceive time. It does touch on physics, but only peripherally. I think it was a recommendation from Lisa Cron. Interesting, informative, and good research.

Next up was Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey. Loved. I think Carriger’s take is my favourite so far. It’s helped me understand that what I gravitate toward is a heroine’s journey, which does not entail big heroics and final battles. I think it’s going to help me embrace the stories I want to tell, although I’m not telling them in genres strong in the feminine vibe. It may be problematic, but we’ll see what I make out of it.

Finally, I read Roshani Chokshi’s The Silvered Serpents, the follow up to The Gilded Wolves. It’s another heist novel, but the entire team is dealing with the fallout from Tristan’s death. Though I really enjoyed it, the novel was clearly part of a series and there were a lot of loose ends that weren’t tied up. I don’t mind this, but I do want a sense of some resolution. Some mysteries were answered, but a whole new batch of questions arose, and I was left a little dissatisfied. Still a Chokshi fan, though.

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until tisday, be well and stay safe, be kind, and stay strong. The world needs your stories.