NaNoWriMo 2026 Writing Chronicles: Writing in the Waiting Room

Last year I graduated with my master’s, and then two weeks later was fired from my job. After I applied everywhere I could, both where I lived and in my parents’ city, my mom temporarily hired me to help with her business while I figured out my life. When I realized I needed time to address some personal health issues and heal from the emotional damage getting fired caused (a fucked-up story for another time), Mom offered me a full-time position, which I accepted.

Now all my stuff is in storage, I’ve moved back in with my parents in my hometown, and I’m working for my mom’s bookkeeping company for $30,000 less than what I made at my old job. Keep in mind, my work on the marketing team was mostly writing, graphic design, and digital illustration—before they put me in charge of purchasing merch and things went to hell in a handbasket. Going from that to bookkeeping has been a bit soul-sucking.

Then at the beginning of this year my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

Because my dad works a high-demand job and my sister is still in the city I moved from finishing her bachelor's degree, I became mom’s caretaker. It's basically been a year of doctor appointments, therapy sessions, helping manage her exercise and nutrition, being the shoulder she could cry on, and mediating between my parents when things get really hard. And it's still ongoing even though she's done with radiation, though the appointments are now once a week instead of every day.

Meanwhile, my grandfather keeps teetering between dying and starting to recover. My sister is living with our grandparents, watching this happen up close and unable to do anything about it. That, along with some pretty extreme personal struggles, has her fighting severe depression. Which is something I’m trying to push off myself by keeping busy and trying to stay numb. I feel guilty because I can't be there to help my sister and be here to help my mom at the same time.

Life is hard right now.

But it's taught me a lot because during all of this I've spent a lot of time waiting. Waiting in the car, in line at the pharmacy, outside exam rooms, and in actual waiting rooms.

At some point during grad school I stopped writing for myself. All my energy went to my job and my coursework. And though both yielded some wonderful creative works that I am incredibly proud of, they weren't 100% mine. In fact, I struggle to recall the times I wrote for fun before starting grad school.

One night this past summer, after my mom's cancer removal surgeries she was in extreme pain. I stayed up late watching over her, getting her water, pain meds, looking up if I needed to take her to the emergency room or if we just needed to push through, etc. When she finally fell asleep I put on Black Sails and tried to get some more research done on what the recovery process was supposed to look like and if something was going wrong. At some point I fell asleep.

The dream I had that night was of Vaelora—the fictional world the series I'm working on for NaNoWriMo, The Blood Oath, is set in. In this dream I saw a pirate captain and his crew ambush a family living on an isolated island in the dead of night after raiding the nearby village. The pirates were looking for a magical sword—the sword the family had been charged to protect for generations. A noble burden placed on them by the gods a couple millennia ago.

When I woke I grabbed my phone and typed out furiously in my notes app everything I could remember from the dream. Once I was sure I got everything down I went back to sleep and had several dreams of other scenes and action sequences and characters and landscapes and just a bunch of stuff. It felt like I was there.

The next day I brought my iPad and computer with me to my mom's checkup appointment. I sat for about two hours in that waiting room writing down as much as I could in my notes and on an actual document. By the time I was done I had an outline of the plot for the first book and explored some options for the magic system and got about halfway through creating a map of Vaelora.

Ever since, the majority of the time I've spent waiting has been working on this series. Partly because it gives me something to do other than worry, and partly because the waiting is usually the only time I have to ``write because the rest of my time from waking to sleeping is spoken for. And as I look back on the past couple of months of work on this series I can't help but be upset with myself.

How many times before this period in my life had I spent my time scrolling or staring at the wall instead of working on something that actually brings me joy and exercises my personal creativity? Creativity not tied to a deadline or assignment, but something that welled up from the depths of my imagination. How many times has an idea crossed my mind but died silently because I kept making excuses for why I couldn't pursue it?

How many times have you let an idea die before even giving it a chance?

As storytellers we have a special power. But that power can only be accessed through action. This time in history is simultaneously the best and worst time to be a storyteller in. From digital access to vast amounts of knowledge to the many different media accessible to storytellers, we can create entire worlds much more easily than in the past. But we are also under attack, from generative artificial intelligence, busy lives, economic turmoil causing us to work ourselves to death, oversaturation of distractions on social media, etc. Finding the time to write can often feel like an insurmountable task.

The most successful authors are the ones who write. That's it. There are so many books I've seen (and dnf'd) that were written horribly, but were still being seen and making money, and it's because they existed. So if you aren't writing because you fear sucking at it just remember that Colleen Hoover is a popular author and Twilight, After, and Fifty Shades of Grey all exist and are wildly popular. You could be a talented writer with a prolific voice and mastery over prose and world building but no one will ever know because you never set pen to paper—or in many cases fingers to keyboard.

Regardless of your inspiration, process, medium, etc. the best way to create is to act. Steal every moment you can to tell your story. The world steals so much from us it's time we steal it back. In line at the pharmacy, outside your kid's school in the pickup lane, in the pew on Sunday waiting for the service to start, sitting in the waiting room.

If you have a story to tell but feel like it's impossible because of your schedule or because of other life circumstances I recommend looking for your waiting rooms. Each tiny moment of creation not only adds up in the long run, it sustains us until we can have the time or conditions we want.

Like with everything worthwhile doing, small steps take you farther than no steps at all.

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NaNoWriMo Day 1 Recap

Starting Word Count: 13,212

Chapters: 4

Day 1 Ending Word Count: 13,212

Lore Building: Worked on my pantheon. Basically just tightening up some personality profiles and renaming some because I didn't like the placeholder names I got from those fantasy name generator websites when I initially made notes on the pantheon. Worked on plotting out the entire series to help me decide ho many continuous thread to put in book one. Also worked on developing the plot for in a more detailed way for book one. Created a new notes journal so I can keep all of the changes and additions more organized. Writing: Did not actually get to work on the book itself.

Plans for Next Session: Finishing chapter 3 rewrite and then starting on chapter 2 rewrite because reworking chapter 3 gave me ideas to make chapter 2 better.