Daylight savings time is a beast. It robs me of several hours of productivity every fall. There is something about it being dark by 5:00 p.m. that is terrifically depressing. While there’s a part of me that thinks hey this is cozy I can curl up is a good book and a blanket and read the hours away, there is another part of me (the responsible adult and parent) that just feels tired and still needs to cook dinner for her family every single night. So, I spend most of November and all of December waiting waiting for the winter solstice when daylight slowly seeps back into the world.
We’ve been stuck at home in quarantine because of covid-19, which admittedly, sucks. But one positive thing I’ve noticed is that when we get to spend more time in the daylight than we would if we were at school or work. And the weather has been a balmy 60°the last three days. We’ve been out soaking it in as much as possible. Vitamin D levels drop in the winter and when my vitamin D levels are low, I’m prone to depression and my anxiety spikes. Anxiety isn’t too good right now anyway since the pandemic, but I’m doing as much self-care as possible.
Nanowrimo is going well, so I’m not quite as prolific as I had hoped. Starting with a new topic each day is a lot more challenging than just continuing where your characters left off the day before I’m finding. Each short story requires fully developed characters, interesting plot, and realistic setting all within a few pages. I find the restrictions exhilarating, really. I remember there being a huge argument about form versus creativity when I was in college. The argument related primarily to poetry, I can see how being constrained by form can actually ignite one’s creativity. As many of you know, I am a huge Sherlock fan. Within my fandom, there is a form called the 221B. this is a piece of fanfiction that is written in 221 words the last word has to end with the letter b. They are incredibly fun to read and challenging to write. So I find the challenge of writing a short story daily pretty invigorating, but also very, very challenging . Hopefully, I will get some good short stories and I will have to filter out all the terrible ones at the end of the month. Meanwhile, here are a few pictures of my neighborhood.
Kelly Moore Writes 