Excuse me Ladies and Gentlemen, Sorry for the Interruption…
My plan for Camp NaNoWriMo this year was simple: edit my manuscript in preparation for beta readers, and work on a couple of short stories for submission to lit mags to build my publishing resume.
I was going to start with the editing because my hope was that I would have a draft ready for beta readers by the middle of the month. (My family is coming to visit, and they have been wanting to see what I've been working on.) But when both kids came down with the flu a couple of weeks ago, I got behind on my rewrites and I didn't end up finishing the draft until the end of March. So I decided to switch it up and start with the short stories to give the manuscript time to marinate.
But all my plans have been thrown out the window.
I was sweeping the floor the other night while my husband was bathing the kids when I was suddenly hit with an idea for a retelling of Cinderella. I pulled out my phone and jotted down the basic gist of the idea as it came to me so I wouldn't forget and I could start on it once I completed my other projects. (If I don't write things down, they don't happen. I once went to the grocery store three times in one day because I didn't write down the one thing I went to the store for in the first place and forgot it all three times #mombrain.)
But I woke up at 4:30 the next morning still thinking about it, so I gave in and let the inspiration flow. By the time the kids were up I already had down 2,000 words. I wrote another 2,000 words during their nap. The next morning I wrote another 1500, and another almost another 3,000 during nap time.
I wasn't planning on writing a new book this month. I have plenty of other things to work on. But who am I to refuse the muse? And though I'm not usually a huge fan of princess-y things, I'm having fun writing a story about a girl who finds herself pursued by a prince who is suddenly in line for a throne he doesn't want. You know, the classic sort of fairytale where the damsel saves the prince in distress. And they live happily ever after.