Today’s Fiction Friday here at Cottonwood Hollow. Dawn’s roses and golds glow behind black silhouettes of cottonwood trees. Most of their leaves blew off in yesterday’s strong wind and now lie strewn over the green grass in a haphazard pattern of brown and gold.

A double mug of steaming coffee, laced with almond toffee creamer, steams in my hand and delights more with each sniff than with each sip.

About that mug…. It’s my favorite mug all year, but it becomes more meaningful each fall. That’s when its printed words shout.

In case you can’t read it, it says, “National Novel Writing Month” on the front.

Emblazoned on the back…

Are these words, “Can’t talk; noveling.”

Each November I participate in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for long. I take temporary leave of my senses and write at least 50,000 words in a new novel, totally from scratch. It’s a real creative rush!

In the last five Novembers, I’ve written two juvenile fiction novels and begun three novels for adults. All of them have promise and I hope eventually to hold those books in my hands.

Recently I’ve been working on last November’s novel, Living Echoes, which begins with a driving accident that gives the protagonist a head injury. It’s been a challenge to write in a brain-damaged first person point of view. Short chapters depicting events following the accident are interspersed with longer chapter flashbacks that show how she arrived at her complicated physical, marital, and spiritual crisis.

Since November 1 is less than a month away, I’ve been thinking and praying about this November’s plot and protagonist. My idea is to write the first in a series of four juvenile fiction books for “tweens” (8-12 year olds). The protagonist will be female and I think the series will be about a blended family. I have a few ideas about this first volume, but I really can’t say much because I don’t know a lot yet. I will have to see how it develops.

For someone who constantly meets deadlines with nonfiction work, focusing on fiction is highly therapeutic. Blocks of fiction writing lift the writer out of the chronic cares and concerns of reality into the lofty plane of imagination.

I’ve been at work since 3:00 AM and have done what I can to meet a Monday deadline. I also need to work on a book proposal, which I should do before immersing myself in fiction. But this is Fiction Friday, and I hope to carve out a block or two of time to focus exclusively on fiction.

Before the sun rises higher, I need to follow Elisabeth Elliot’s excellent advice and “do the next thing.” Happy Fiction Friday from Cottonwood Hollow!