IWSG: December Edition

**The Insecure Writers Support Group is a monthly gathering of writers to help encourage and inspire others by sharing our triumphs and concerns. You can find out more by clicking HERE and sign up if you'd like! We're always happy to add one more to our ranks! As always, a great big THANK YOU to our fearless leader, Captain Alex who created the IWSG and all the fabulous co-hosts for December.**

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Good morning! This is it, kids! The final posting of the Insecure Writers Support Group for 2015. Now, I know some of you are going to say that the year whooshed by and left your head spinning. I'm in the other, smaller camp: for me, 2015 has dragged by, not as slowly as last year, but slow enough for me to actually differentiate between months and seasons. It's been a good year. A really good year! My husband and I survived our first year in a new city. I changed jobs and Jon found a career. Things are still a bit cramped on the homefront, but the Christmas tree is up, the decorations are out, and this Christmas will see us going home to visit family and friends. It's a much, much brighter scene than last Christmas. Am I feeling insecure? Not at all. Even though I failed to produce a NaNo novel for the third year in a row, I'm ok. I hope everyone else who participated got out of NaNo what you'd hoped to accomplish. For me, I realized that writing frantically on a story I wasn't wholly committed to just to say "I did it" wasn't a good enough reason to write. In fact, November had me in a "I'd rather be sewing" state of mind. And sew I did (ba-dum-ching). Now that the holidays are in full swing, I'm feeling the old tug of the muse. I've taken up pen and paper again and I'm slowly etching an idea into being. I've learned a lot of lessons about myself this year, one which hit me yesterday in full epiphany form and I'm letting it sauce and simmer while I explore it through a new form for me: the essay. It's a lovely exploration of writing for writing's sake. Not for the pursuit of publication but for the sheer joy of emptying my mind and pushing words around on the page. Just to see where they'll lead. So far, the rabbit trail is nothing more than a faint dent in the undergrowth but I'm slowly following, slowly discovering and uncovering. How are YOU, Dear Reader? Did you complete a novel in November? Did you do any writing at all or did you sit back and enjoy the season? Have a fantastic holiday season: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Years' and anything I may have missed! I'll still be blogging up until the week of Christmas and then it's two weeks off to enjoy family, friends, and all the wonder. Then it's a bright and shiny 2016! I wonder what wonders we'll write? Happy Holidays and WRITE ON! All the best,