Be back after the 3 Day Novel Contest is over..

Well, the 3 Day Novel contest is approaching quickly and with this being my 5th year of participation I do know what to expect and how much work it will be.

For the next two weeks I will be doing research and preparing my outline - yes, that is allowed. In the previous years I stayed with my outline for 3 of the 4 years and I really made good progress and finished my novel with time to spare. The one year I strayed - well lets not discuss the details, but I did finish it. I'm proud of the accomplishment for actually having done it - but it was more of a skeleton with some basic details and while it was cohesive it wasn't as rich or as detailed as I would have liked.

That said, I still believe that just having completed and submitting the novel for the contest is something to be proud of and is an incredible achievement. It's fun, it's gruelling and its challenging but the rewards for completing it are incredible.

So... with that as my focus, I won't be blogging again until after the contest is over. Wish me luck and I'll be back soon.

Writing is healing...

For me writing is very cathartic and I suspect it is for everyone else as well. Today will most likely be no different, with the exception that the impetus behind it is today's actual date. Today would have been my fathers 62nd birthday had he survived his 2nd bought with cancer and that is the fuel behind all of my writings today - blogs and otherwise.

I suspect that his death, our relationship and the lessons learned will work their way into the novel I will be writing in a few weeks when I do the 3 Day Novel contest for the 5th year. The first year my husband and I had lost our second baby a week before - so I not only had my topic, but I also had some healing. The surprise to me was that the healing was not just for me - but for my entire family when they read it and cried for their own memories.

The second and third years I had different stories and thoughts to write about. The fourth year mom died so I had my topic and again my own personal healing route. Again though, my entire family read it and they too had their own emotional responses.

This year I am under no illusion that the story will not be about loss, but if I am to be completely honest, while the other two were extremely painful to write about I am afraid this will be almost too hard to do.

Losing a second child through miscarriage after welcoming their existence is hard, incredibly hard - but it comes from a place of such love and purity that the loss is acute. Losing an incredible mother again was a complete devastation. Losing my father while being devastating leaves me with so many regrets, would haves, should haves, reasons and explanations to explore that I fear I will find more pain.

Our estrangement was too long and not healed when he died and now I find myself exploring everything that led up to that. One of the hardest things I am finding now is that I didn't know. Nobody told me he was sick, nobody told me he was dying. Nobody even told me he had died until when I was trying to reconcile with him 18 months later...

I never for one moment thought he would die or even be seriously ill and nobody would contact me. I never thought I would lose my place as his daughter all together, yet I was the one that walked away so have no rights in that regard and am not supported in my frustration and heartache. I am also alone in my grieving for him and that is my penance for doing the same to him.

In my looking back on the situation to see where it went off the tracks I am finding that things were not as either one of us had believed and large part our undoing was at the hands of someone else. I know he realized that before he died but I am only now just realizing it. It would be hard enough to deal with this for its own reasons but to know our separation was planned and perpetrated by another through deception and poison - well it will make for a good book, but it hurts like hell.

I know my heart is going to break and that scares me, yet I know it is necessary for my past, my present and the future I am holding myself back from. I think on some level I am preparing for that as much as I am preparing my story outline, yet I have faith that as with the other two, this will be just as cathartic for me. I know in my heart my father knows what I am doing and the condition of my heart and I feel confident that he will hold it in his hands and mend it when I need him to. He is after all, my father and he loves me. He always has I just didn't see it.

Change is constant

I don't know about anybody else but I always feel my life is changing. For a long time I fought against that change from a place of fear, but I have since learned that change is growth and it is a good thing- and is something to be embraced. So much so, I infact welcome change with a new excitment - wondering what comes next.

I have also learned that there can be beauty found in what can be perceived as chaos, this picture is one example of that. It is a perfect balance and representation of how we are like nature. I love the contrasts life provides us with and how that opens us up to such richness of experience.

As I begin to prepare for my 5th - 3 Day Novel Contest I am going to continue to explore the creative choices that have been provided to me in this lifetime.

I know what my hopes, dreams and goals are for the long term, it is just the short term ones that I need clarity on. I've always been a big picture thinker and am so focused that sometimes I can forget where my feet are at this moment.

Truth be told I do most things on faith and instinct and trust that I will feel my way through. If I feel good - then this must be good, if I feel bad this cannot be good for me. I do the same thing with my writing. When I am able to clear my mind and just let the words type themselves without self editing to death -they come. They always do I just have to get out of my own way to let them happen. When I do, I am never disappointed.

There is never a bad day of writing - for words are what they are, the meanings are what they have come to say to us and it is up to interpret them. I am choosing to be open to whatever is coming to me and I have faith in my creative abilities that they will lead me in the direction that I am to go in - even if it is not what is pictured in my mind at this moment.

While my writing efforts are going to be focused on this contest - my blogs here until the September 2nd when the contest is over - may be sparce. I will be back as often as the writing allows - both internally and externally.