'Twas the month after NaNoWriMo...

By Maureen L. Bonatch 

‘Twas the month after NaNoWri, and all through the house

The writer sat dressed in sticky notes with stains on her blouse;

The words had been written without worry or care,

With the hopes that a story lay buried in there;

The family slept soundly, resting in bed;

While the writer woke early with plot lines circling her head;

With the neighbor’s Christmas lights gleaming, earlier than she’d remembered,

She struggled to comprehend how she’d lost November,

While wandering through the house, that had become such a mess,

She returned to the computer, neglecting Christmas cards needing addressed.

Facing the blank screen, she plugged in the flash drive,

Opening the story where her characters came so alive.

The curser blinked beside more than one typo,

Making her wonder if the whole document should go,

When what to her curious eyes did appear,

But a glorious sentence, maybe her best all this year,

With prose written so perfect and slick,

She rapidly scrolled the document with click after click.

More swiftly than snowflakes, the needless words came,

She highlighted and deleted as she called them by name:

Now, That! Now, Had!, now Only and Always!

Backspace on Tried to, Perhaps, delete, Very and Stall words!

To the trash went the passive words! Her inflated word count did fall!

As she deleted, deleted, deleted them all!

As the sentence structure tightened, her smile grew,

Across the keyboard, her fingertips flew

Crafting her glorious story, with characters she knew—

And then, in the background, she heard something fall

The thrashing and mauling of her two kids in the hall.

As she paused on the keyboard, and was turning around,

Into the room, her kids came with a bound.

Their faces were scrunched and they demanded some food,

She tried to explain, she wasn’t in the mood.

The stacks of dirty laundry lay piled at their back.

The kids looked like ragamuffins choosing clothes from the stack.

Her characters needed her, but the kids wanted to eat,

Completing all of this seemed an impossible feat.

Their little mouths pulled down into a frown,

When she pleaded to wait until she wrote just one more word down.

The candy canes for the tree, lay trampled beneath,

They threatened to make a salad, from a ratty Christmas wreath.

Their old Christmas jammies displayed their little round bellies,

She took a whiff and found her kids had grown a tad smelly.

The story beckoned and called as she studied her brood,

She smiled at their frustration, in spite of their mood;

She hopped from the chair and jumped the laundry pile,

Promising her story it would only be awhile.

She spoke not a word, but filled up the tub,

Told the kids to jump in and rub a dub-dub,

Grabbing all the laundry, she rushed down the stairs,

Pausing to grab a pair of stray underwear,

Whipping it all into the machine she started the load,

Then gathered all the leftovers she found in the abode,

She paused to exclaim as she returned to the story—

A crockpot meal for you all, while I unearth my NaNoWri manuscript’s glory!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 

Tell me...Did you participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? If so, how did you do and what are you doing with your story now?

Maureen L. Bonatch's stories boast laughter, light suspense and something magical in the hope of sharing her love of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary world.    

Find her:

Writing on her Website
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Pinning on Pinterest
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Available for Pre-Order Now!

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