Bernadette Benda

(just finished watching the Mandalorian and now watching the British Baking Show. It’s a good Friday night)

Tomorrow is All Hallow’s Eve/Halloween/Almost NaNoWriMo.

I was thinking back to waaaaay long ago, and I remember sitting on the porch during Trick-or-Treating wearing a cloak and masquerade mask writing….a blog (which is very Bernadette of me. I mean what else do you except me to be doing on a moody October night?) and I just….ah, just looking to autumn days long gone by *sighs wistfully*

Not to get too sentimental BUT, just Halloween has so many memories, like last year when mom and I took a walk late, when a few kids were still trick-or-treating, and I was in my puffy coat as we went to go look at the really cool pirate house (pause: there’s this house near us that has a huge pirate ship set up in their front yard everyone Halloween with skeleton pirates included) (and fog).

OR, that time we went to see the Scorch Trials on Halloween on a rainy, spooky, dark, night, and we were in a dingy theater in the BASEMENT and then the next morning my lovely garden was absolutely smashed, like a giant whole ripped through the chicken wire, the only explanation being zombies (we never did find out what did it….)

This will now be my 5th (!!!!) year doing NaNoWriMo, and that in and of itself is becoming one of the reasons I do it. Making memories, building memories, putting more memories on top of the memories, making a cake of memories basically (you knew cake would come into this since I’m watching the Baking Show)

It’s a TRADITION that’s the word I’m looking for, not Memory Cake. But I kinda like Memory Cake better. We’re gonna go with that.

NaNoWriMo has become a Memory Cake. And one of the best kinda, since it involves writing.

Even if you don’t do NaNoWriMo, or even if you hate it, I think it’s great because it’s a way to create a Memory Cake, as a writer. It’s easier for writing to just become…a chore. We plow through our drafts, plow through our edits, query, query, query, and pull our hair out over plot holes that turn to wormholes.

But we write because we love it, so we should remember that.

NaNoWriMo reminds me of the fun part, the magic part. The part that makes you twelve-years-old again writing 20 stories at once, none of them with any plots, except vibes and trees and elves and magic giant sea turtles (lowkey need to bring that back).

We all need to go back to our roots sometimes, or go back to your why, or whatever. Just as much as I will harp that you need to treat writing like a job so you can get the discipline to finish stuff etc etc…..don’t forget the fun part? Don’t forget the part that had you making up stories as you tramped through the woods as a kid or stared out the windows on roadtrips? (or however you started. Maybe it was as a kid, an adult, maybe when you were 500 hundred years old because your a vampire)

And lastly, “chicka da chicka da” (credit: my mom. It’s uh….our brains have all melted).

I’m sorry this was all over the place. Writing in the dark and watching TV shows at 9 pm is um…interesting.

Go eat some candy. Spooky your neighbors. Don your cloak and elf ears.