It’s Fall! It’s getting progressively harder to pretend it’s not. The days are getting shorter and the leaves are turning colors. Time to break out the scarves and the flannels and the pumpkin spice!

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Fall has always been a sort of love-hate relationship for me, ever since I was young. To be honest, it’s mostly love. The beginning of the school year was always exciting, even if I knew it would get old fast. And my Dad always loved Fall and his enthusiasm was infectious. My biggest hurdles, especially as a kid, was my anxiety and my fear of anything remotely “scary.” I specifically remember being afraid of skeletons and skulls. Thus, Halloween was the bane of my childhood. Those things were everywhere.

Halloween bothers me… less now that I’m grown. It’s more of an annoyance now rather than abject terror every time I leave the house. And now I’m also one of the many people who’s depression and anxiety kicks in harder this time of year. But there are several things I’ve done throughout the past few years to help me combat the extra seasonal anxiety. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised, this year it’s been less difficult.

So the last few years I’ve focused on creative endeavors as soon as fall kicked in. I don’t have a school work any more to keep me occupied, (I have kids, but they aren’t mentally stimulating yet, just physically exhausting.) So as soon as Fall kicked in this year, I was struck more so with a desire to create things more instead of being struck with an increase in anxiety. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still there. But it’s easier.

And I want to make things. All the things.

So in past years, I participated in both Inktober and NaNoWriMo. Then I decided that I wanted to focus more on writing than drawing and turned my Inktober challenge into a different writing challenge. I don’t know if I’m going to participate in any particular challenges this October. If anything, it’ll be Preptober, the getting ready for the craziness that is NaNo.

It’s hard not to get psyched for NaNo. I don’t even know if it’s feasible for me to participate this year. I have yet to “win” and make the 50k goal, but I always make a big dent in my WIP and I like the challenge.

For a long time, I’d been using NaNo to work on my Youngtalon Chronicles. But within the past year I started a series of shorts and I think I want to work on that this year. It would be good to just get the whole series drafted and then work on the editing and publishing of the series in 2021.

So, I’m excited. And hopeful. Maybe this year will be the year I finally win NaNo somehow. I really have no idea how that would happen though. Who knows.

What are your goals for the upcoming months? Are you going to do NaNo? Do you know what project you’ll be writing for NaNo?