Lake Neuron

My old Mountain T.O.P. friends Marijo and Allen Bond have a hayride and bonfire every year at their beautiful farm in Williamson County. I missed it last year, so I really wanted to go tonight.

Some years, Marijo and Allen are the only people I know, but this year there were several other folks whom I knew through Mountain T.O.P. One of them was a former board member whose day job is with a management company in Nashville. We were catching up and she asked me what I do when I’m not working at the paper. I eagerly started telling her about my NaNoWriMo novel, and we started talking about whether I intended to try to go back and rewrite and edit it after November. We discussed publish-on-demand solutions, in case maybe I just want to try to offer the novel to my friends and family or others in Shelbyville who are familiar with me through my mission trip stories for the newspaper.

At the end of the conversation, she told me that her company — which I associated with Christian music, and one well-known artist in particular — moved into the literary world a few years back. Perhaps she thinks I already knew that and was trying to pitch to her — I didn’t, and I wasn’t. She’s an old Mountain T.O.P. friend, and I was just glad to see her.

NaNoWriMo requires that you not really worry too much whether your novel turns out well or not while you’re writing, and the vast majority of people who think it would be fun to be a published author don’t have enough literary talent to write their way out of a paper bag. I am, no doubt, one of those people — although I’d hardly be human if I didn’t fantasize about it from time to time.

Tags: Mountain T.O.P., NaNoWriMo, Novel