29 Gifts: Days One to Eight

I started writing for NaNo at midnight on November 1st. Eight hundred words in, I called it a night and headed to bed. It wasn't flowing very well. I wasn't fired up to write it and I hadn't figured out who was the most appropriate narrator out of my cast of characters. They all know different things and have something else to contribute to the story. I toyed around with jumping from one to another. It was a pretty shoddy patchwork. Uninspiring. It would take an eternity to peck out 50,000 words at the rate I was going. I needed a story that was more ready to go. Was NaNo not for me this year?

I woke up after five hours alive with an idea for my 29 Gifts experience. I would organize a food drive in our building for the month of November. I couldn't sleep another moment, I had to jump out of bed and brainstorm and print things and daydream about how I could get my neighbors as involved and motivated as I was. My soul was on fire and my brain was nonstop and I knew, without any doubt, that NaNo was definitely not for me this year. I could spend my free time writing a story I don't know how to tell yet or I could spend it, a blaze of excitement, doing charitable work that would make the world around me a better place. The passion I have for one above the other made it a complete no-brainer.

I signed up for 29gifts.org and have spent eight days consciously looking for ways to give gifts every day. I've been blogging my experiences on that community, but thought I'd post every week or so here for those interested but not keen on surfing off LiveJournal to keep up.

( Eight days of gifts, under here... )