The Happiest Woman in Costa Rica

The happiest woman in Costa Rica got depressed this week. She hasn’t won any happiness contests that I know of, so her title is informal. What makes her think she’s the happiest woman in Costa Rica? I don’t know, but I believe her. I’m fairly happy, but I’ve done a bit of moping and griping lately.

My friend and neighbor, Mary, the happiest woman, succumbed to the horrible-weather blues. Here in Costa Rica, we had Hurricane Thomas on the east, a low-pressure system on the west, and rain all over the country. Not just rain, but landslides that killed people, bridges that collapsed and roads that were flooded or covered with rocks and or mud. We had rain in the morning, all during the day, and all night, too. I began looking at the mountain out back, and wondering what a landslide might sound like, but I wasn’t depressed.

Why not? NaNoWriMo. Every day this week, I’ve written at least 1,700 words, and today, I broke the 10,000-word-barrier! I’m among the 156,000 or so people writing novels this month. As of today, 614,902,356 words have been written, and posted on the site worldwide. Being a part of NaNoWriMo almost makes up for not attending Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity.”

For years, as an English teacher, I assured students who thought they couldn’t write anything longer than a page to use dialogue, including internal dialogue; to describe setting and characters; to block (show characters doing things); to show instead of telling; and to have a story to tell- a story that had a beginning, middle and end. Now I’m following my own fabulous advice, and it’s working. I’m going to tell a story a day, and hope that after 30 days, they all make sense, and fit together into a novel. Hey, if they don’t, who cares? I’ll have written 50,000 words in 30 days, and told a lot of stories.