WFMAD Day 26

I can't believe it's Day 26 already! Only five more days left in the month, and only five more days of the writing challenge. I've been reflecting on this journey and realized how heavily I relied on the prompts earlier in the month. Writing was so hard and felt so foreign. But I know I've grown and become more comfortable because for the past several days, I've been doing my own thing. Blogging. Creating new characters. Developing existing characters. Writing new scenes. Trying new ideas and genres.

My plan for September is to walk my writing path. This means going back through everything I've written in the past month and deciding what excites me enough to expand it, what needs to be shoved into the back of a drawer never again to see the light of day, and what needs major editing. I'm already looking forward to it. I haven't really reread anything I've written. My only goal was to write something every day.

I spent a great portion of this morning organizing items for a garage sale I'm planning for next month. It will be the third garage sale of my life. Most of the items for sale belong to the peeps. I thought nostalgia would strike as I dug through baby clothes and toys. While each object conjured a memory and served as a snapshot of a moment in their lives, they didn't make me sad. Instead I felt an overwhelming sense of amazement and accomplishment.

Some of the toys - the farm that plays "Old MacDonald" over and over and over and over and over and then oinks, quacks, and moos over and over and over and over and over or the roughed-up, diaper-clad Elmo that sings "Elmo loves to go up up. Up Up Elmo. Thanks for picking Elmo up. Hug Elmo today!" over and over and over and over and over - I'm not going to miss. Giddiness flowed through my body as I pasted a neon disk with a dollar sign on to those toys. And I couldn't help but grin with the thought of the next unwitting parent or grandparent who would take these devil toys home with them. But other toys made me realize how far the peeps have come intellectually and developmentally over the past year. The toys they cherish now are vastly different than the ones they loved just a few months ago. The peeps are into reading books with plots; building towers, castles, and the Yellow Brick Road; playing "Little Red Riding Hood" with a scrap of red fabric; and working intricate wooden puzzles. No. Their old toys didn't make me pine for the old days. They had the opposite effect: They made me excited about what the future holds for them.

I can say the same for myself. As the WFMAD Challenge winds down, I am filled with a sense of personal accomplishment and I am excited about what the future holds for this new part of my life.