My last year’s project.

I wrote 50,000 words last November in honor of NaNoWriMo. The Playgroup is a novel based on my experiences as a young mother in Palm Springs, Calif. It’s a story about testing friendships and how one person changed the quiet lives of the moms’ group.

I wrote 2,000 to 3,000 words each day and made it to my goal by Thanksgiving.

But then, I lost the manuscript. I was waiting until the new year to begin the process of editing and revising, but I blew it. I never backed it up and my laptop was erroneously deleting files. I lost my community newsletter and The Playgroup rough draft.

UGH!

I thought I had set up automatic backups to icloud — but I didn’t. Now I manually back up to a thumb drive each day.

I began rewriting the manuscript and it’s taken on a new life. My biggest change was the point of view. It was written from one character but I expanded it to the POV of four moms. I’m at about 25,000 words now, so my NaNoWriMo month will be half the words I wrote last year.

I’m currently flying to Seattle for the week to visit my mom, so I don’t think I’ll get to writing until I return home. Not an awesome start to the month, but I’ll be back!

Have you taken on a writing challenge? What is it and how did it go for you?