I fell off the face of the earth – not! But I did disappear from my blog for a bit. And I wrote a couple of posts that are in draft status still hoping to post them earlier this month. Like my kids say, whatever! Now those posts are not relevant, not until I make quite a few updates to them. And as I browsed through posts of other bloggers I read, I came across this post by Lily Leung which made me feel she was saying the words I was thinking about in those first couple of lines.

While I cannot honestly say I have been so busy I could not peep in here, I was doing other things enough that my focus was elsewhere, so I stayed away. All the while thinking of the posts I could have written instead 🙂

And November is full of wonderful literary celebrations – all already in the past as of today, for this year at least, as you can see, except for the month long ones! Today is the last day for World Nursery Rhyme Week 🙂 (Any favorite nursery rhymes from your childhood?)

November

National Picture Book Month National Life Writing Month NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month National Family Literacy Month Family Stories Month Memoir Writing Month

World Nursery Rhyme Week Second week – National Newspaper Week Third week – National Young Reader’s Week Third week – National Book Awards Week (Awards announced on the 20th!)

1st Thursday – National Non-Fiction Book Day (in the UK) 1 – Author’s Day 1 – National Family Literacy Day 15 – I Love to Write Day (started by author John Riddle in 2002 in the US) 18 – High-Five a Librarian Day

So, I did try to start writing as part of NaNoWriMo with my daughter who is doing it for school. This plan to write for NaNoWriMo started last month when out of the blue, my dd asked me if I planned to participate in it. When I mentioned that I don’t have any plans to, and also mentioned how I am still playing catch-up for UBC and Inktober (which she was aware of), she replied, “but this is October and that is November”!

While I am not writing a novel and had no plans at all for NaNoWriMo, I am trying to do some kind of creative fictional writing and have about 2000 (not really, about 1000+) words in place now, which I feel is not too bad considering I got started much later than I planned and got derailed a couple of times as well. I hope to reach at least 10000 words though by the end of the month.

Writing has always been an activity I enjoyed; as far as back as I can remember ; even before I started writing:). It started with making up stories for my little brother (not so little of course anymore). Next came assignments for school, which were still enjoyable. Later I moved on to writing poems and essays and short stories simply for the sake of writing them, not because I had to do it for school. And I still have a dream to follow through to completion- books. I am going to get started on that soon(fingers crossed 🤞).

Since(or once again because) I read the book Why Writers Write, I pondered over that question myself – Why? Well, some of the reasons I write are because:

• first and foremost, to put it simply, writing makes me happy. Writing is my bliss.
• it helps me put thoughts into words what my mouth does not always say that I fail to say out loud when I talk.
• I love to talk (and writing is quieter, which I know sometimes my family might appreciate; that is one reason they love that I enjoy reading as well. I might be talking their heads off otherwise:))
• it helps me understand the world around me, make sense of what I read and see, put things into perspective for myself and hopefully my readers as well
• I like to read
• it is fun…
• well, because….

So what about you, dear reader? Why do you write? (and for those of you who have answered this on my previous post already, here is another question: what or who inspires you most to write?

Quotable Quotes

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” – Flannery O’Connor

“… I write because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more scared of not writing.” – Gloria E. Anzaldúa

What Next?

I do have a few picture books that I want to share with all of you, and I will do so in the next few posts here. And progress on my NaNoWriMo as well as a few overdue posts (that I mentioned earlier here) that will make their way out from the dusty draft corner into the world!