Every year, in November, tens of thousands of writers, at the start of November, sign pledges, set goals, and sit their rear ends in seats in front of computers and begin a novel. Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Internet groups have formed for it. Some in-person meet-ups are probably happening. The goal is 50,000 words for the month. That’s not quite a novel for most genres, but it’s more than just a good start. It’s well on it’s way to writing a novel.

But I am not participating. I never participate in NaNoWriMo. The main reason is the busyness of November. Our main annual family celebration is at Thanksgiving. Preparations for this normally consume much time and energy, leaving little for writing and certainly not enough to complete a novel or even 50,000 words of one. I am working on a novel, and today hope to carve out enough time to add 1,000 words to it. But I can’t commit to NaNoWriMo goals.

This year the time crunch is made worse because of decluttering. Two bedrooms have been in use as decluttering staging areas. They are cluttered. The dining room and our large dining table has also been a site of staging. Boxes and piles, boxes and piles, seemingly everywhere. They grow a little and shrink a little, depending on whether we are finishing with something or starting something new.

Saturday we made some good progress, so naturally the dining room looks much worse than it did on Friday. I said progress because we finally, after nine months, dug into boxes of linens left behind in our house when my mother-in-law died three years ago. We sorted. Somethings we discarded (which means put them aside to go to Goodwill, which takes odd cloths and makes things out of them). Today, Monday, with a little extra effort, might have all this sorted out and put either in the garage for storage/donation or in smaller boxes for storage. I hope.

Writing will continue, even as I work on both physical and digital decluttering. But I have no real goals for output until after Thanksgiving. Then, maybe by the end of December, the first draft of that novel will be done. Meanwhile, I will say with Emerson, there is time enough…for all that I must do.