I was born in Toronto General Hospital. No one sat in the waiting room, tapping a toe on the antiseptic floor, glancing at the clock, anxious to hear the news. When my mother was helped into her bed in the women's ward, the chair at the bottom of her bed remained empty, the phone quiet.

A dozen red roses were brought in by a nurse who scurried out again, unable to think what to say. My mother wept when she was alone with their bittersweet scent, turning her head aside so the other women wouldn't see. She listened to their excited voices as they discussed their newborns and compared their birth experiences, the way women do; she smiled when they tried to include her, but she said little herself.

The next morning my mother sponged away the sweat of her labour. She washed her face and brushed her teeth and exchanged the ugly hospital garb for a lacy nightgown and housecoat my father had given her the Christmas before. She brushed her thick black hair until it shone and lightly applied make-up and lipstick. She got out of bed and stood a minute, gathering her equilibrium, subduing the dizziness and the pain of the episiotomy until they receded behind her iron will and she could straighten and move with no indication of having given birth ten hours ago

The women sharing her room whispered when she had left. They expected her to turn right in the hall, toward the nursery, and whispered louder when she turned left, toward the elevator.

Inside the elevator, my mother practiced smiling at her reflection in the silver doors as she rode up one, two, three floors. When the doors slid open she marched out, head high, smile in place, through the double doors with the sign she had learned to stop noticing, down the hall to my father's room.

That is not my story, not that or the months at home when she nursed him and cared for me and my three older siblings, or the final trip back to Toronto General, or the funeral, or the silent grieving. That is my mother's story. I imagine her standing at his grave, gathering her equilibrium, then raising her bowed head and putting a smile on her face, and taking her children home.

My story is the story of the baby in the photo above, fascinated by her first birthday candle while her brothers feed her birthday cake. My story is the story of every happy child borne of parents who loved each other, and raised in that love. I look at this photograph, and for me that single candle represents a miracle of love over despair, of happiness over grief.

As we sat around her hospital bed at the end of her life,
my mother's last words were, "I can see your father!"
I stood up and held her hand, and said, "When you're ready, Mom, it's alright to go to him." She sighed, and closed her eyes, and released her iron will, and left.

First read about the OM&BBC. Then, check if your name is already on the participants list to the right. If it is, and you are participating, great!

If it isn't, and you want to participate, please sign up by clicking on "Add Comment" right under this short post. Type your name (as you wish us to know you) and your full blog URL in the comment box.
Example:
Jane Ann McLachlan
http://janeannmclachlan.com/october-memoir-and-backstory-blog-challenge.html

I will transfer your name to the list on the right, and link it to your blogsite, so we can all blog hop to each other's site when the challenge begins.

If I have added anyone's name who doesn't want to be in, please let me know in a comment, and I'll delete your name. I've tried to only add those who said they were definitely in, but mistakes happen.

I'm looking forward to seeing your October Challenge blogs!!

GUIDELINES

1. The Challenge starts on Oct. 1st. It's fine to draft a few posts ahead of time (this isn't an endurance test) but please don't start posting until Oct. 1st.

2. The challenge ends on Oct. 31st. If you only get half your posts finished, that's OK - this is supposed to be fun and mutually inspiring, and if it did that for you, count it a success. Come back next year and finish!

3. Please post the ages consecutively. Don't skip an age. That way we can hop to each others' posts and see how others dealt with the same theme. So on Oct.1st, you'll create a post on anything from birth to age 2. (yes, I know this is actually 2 years, but it will avoid confusion later.) On Oct. 2nd, you'll create a post on the age of 2, on Oct. 3. on the age of 3, and so on to age 25.

4. It's OK to skip a day. We have 31 days to create 25 posts. There are built in 'days off.' But don't skip an age. So if you write a post on age 12, then have to take three days off for a family event, when you post again you'll be doing age 13, as though there were no break.

5. Any kind of post representing that age is great. Be inventive. A short memoir, a flashfiction, a poem, a photo with caption, the backstory memory of a character (in your story or from a famous book character you love/hate), an age-appropriate recipe, craft, whatever.

6. Creativity increases in community. An important part of this blog is to meet and inspire creativity in each other. Please visit 10-15 (or more) other blogs doing this challenge on 25 of the 31 days. Please tweet, like, or comment on them. This should take about 20-40 minutes. Everyone wins when we do this.

7. I suggest you post your blog on an age before seeing what others have done with that age. Then, when you check them out afterwards, get ideas you might want to experiment with in future blogs on other ages.

8. Plagiarism is taking an idea or 5-6 consecutive words from someone else's blog and presenting them as your own. Compliment is when you "directly quote" someone's idea or words, and say where it comes from with a link back to the original source, before expressing your own ideas about it.
Example: Jane Ann said "xxx xx xxxxxx xx."(link) That made me think...(your own thoughts).

I'm pumped! I hope you are, too. This should be fun, useful, afford great learning, help us with our projects, and provide interesting posts for all our blogs.

Please sign up with a comment below, giving your name and full blog URL (see example above).
I'd also appreciate you giving me your email address for future notices, either in your comment, or via my "Contact Me" page on this site.
I look forward to getting to know all of you!

What’s more fun than blogging? Blogging together with a common theme, then blog hopping to see each others' posts. Writers often seek writing prompts to stimulate their creativity, and anyone who’s participated in NaNoWriMo knows how productive writing in community can be. So here’s an October challenge that will get your creative juices flowing, increase traffic to your blog, and get you warmed up for NaNoWriMo – or any other creative project you’re engaged in.

Can you produce 25 blog posts in one month? Sure, if you have a theme to inspire you. So here’s the theme: write a memory or reflection for each of the first 25 years of life. It can be a personal memoir from your life, a reflection on turning a certain age, a recollection of someone else at that age, a poem or a photo, on the ages 1 to 25.

For example, on October 1st, you could write about something that happened the year you were born, or about the birth of your child. You could do a photo collage of your first year of life, or of babies. On October 2nd, write about something that happened at age two to you or someone else. If you write a poetry blog, compose a poem for each year of life up to 25. If you write a cooking blog, you could include recipes for healthy baby food, snacks for toddlers, etc. A gardener could reminisce about learning to love gardens at each age, or introducing the hobby to her children as they grow, or suggest gardening ideas for the various ages. Photographers can capture each year in photos. This will work with any type of blog, and you can experiment with different media or genres in your own posts. Br inventive - surprise us, delight us, inspire us, make us laugh, make us cry. Try something different every day or stick to one format and focus on content – anything goes as long as you blog about ages 1-25.

For those who write fiction, this is a good way to troll your past experiences for great story ideas. Or write your blog from the point of view of one of your characters (or a character from your favourite novel) recalling an experience from his or her past – great for fan fiction, character development or experimenting with backstory. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, this will be a good warm-up as you hear your characters reminisce in their own voices.

Skip a day if you have to, but try not to skip an age – and please blog the ages in order – that way we can see what others did with the same age we’ve just posted about. If you don’t finish it’ll still be fun as far as you get, and if you have to skip a day or two now and then, that’s okay. There are 31 days to complete 25 posts.

If you can’t do this challenge this year, can you support us? Follow our challenge, tweet it, mention it on your blog and link back to this post. Any support is appreciated! The October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge sign up will open on Monday, September 24. Spread the word and start planning your blog posts!

Goals are tricky things. We care about them deeply, hang our ego and our heart on their thorny branches and then hide them away where no one will see, just in case we don’t succeed. Which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.

Because if you say your goals aloud to another person, it dramatically increases the likelihood that you will succeed.

That’s what I’ve heard. And it makes sense. I want to meet my personal goals, I really do. But so often I don't get to the big things that matter most to me because I'm busy getting the daily things done, even though they matter less. I once read: imagine you have a pile of sand, a pile of pebbles, a handful of stones, a half-dozen large rocks, and a glass jar just large enough for all six rocks. If you put the sand in first, then the pebbles, then the stones, then finally the rocks, there won’t be room for all the rocks. But if you put the rocks in first, wedging the stones around them, then drop the pebbles in the cracks, and finally drizzle the sand in to fill all the tiny spaces—you’ll get everything in the jar. That’s the secret: first take care of the big things—the goals you really care about—then, in descending order, the less important things.. For me, that means writing and people go in first, cooking and housework last. Of course, everyone’s order will be different, because everyone’s priorities are different.

Even knowing this, I often spend my days on sand and pebbles, and only get to the big things when “everything else” is done. That’s why the above statement makes sense. If I tell someone my goal, and  if I tell a whole lot of people, I’m darn well going to start with that every morning. I’m going to bust my butt to make it happen. Because if I don’t, everyone’s going to see me end up with a jar of sand and pebbles and know I didn't get the rocks in. We don’t like to fail in our goals, but we really, REALLY don’t like to have people know we did.

It's risky, telling people. But if you shoot for the moon, at the very least, you’ll land among the stars.

So I ask you all to join me in a kind of scary, kind of exciting challenge. Tell me your goal, and I’ll tell you mine. Let's shoot for the moon together.

Here’s the challenge: Tell me the goal (or goals) you’ll achieve by Christmas. Yep, December 25, 2012.  Four months. Lots of time.

But wait, that IS a long way off. How do I know I’ll keep focused? How do I know if I’m on track, moving forward? Because we’re going to break it down into steps. Every Monday, I will “weigh in”. I’ll tell you what my specific actions will be for the coming week, and whether I met last week’s actions. And I want you to do the same. Every week, comment on what you accomplished in the past week and what you intend to accomplish in the coming week. Let our group will-power help you achieve your goals..

It doesn’t matter if your goal is to finally sort out all the junk and boxes in your basement by Christmas, or to learn 16 new recipes by Christmas, or to write a novel by Christmas, or learn a new skill, or make four new friends or find your soul-mate and get married. Whatever your goal is, go for it—and we’ll all cheer each other on!

So here's my goal: to have a manuscript accepted (by an agent or a publisher) or self-published, by Christmas. And my first week's step is: by Monday, Sept. 10, I will finish editing my memoir and the proposal that goes with it.

There, committed. I'll let you know on Monday, and set my next week’s step then.

What's your goal by Christmas? And what's your first week’s step toward it?
....

If you're part of my autumn challenge, you've already set yourself a goal to reach by Christmas. That is a huge act of faith in yourself, in your abilities, and perhaps in God. Hold onto that faith every step of the way. You can do this.

Be patient with yourself if one of your weekly steps takes longer than you thought. Don't give up. Be patient about your overall goal. You don't have to do it all today. Give yourself the time you need.

Be compassionate and kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you fall behind. Instead, celebrate the small victories, your weekly achievements. And if it turns out that four months wasn't long enough to achieve your goal, celebrate how far you've come, how much closer you are than when you started. Take pride in the fact that you set yourself a difficult goal, that you stuck to it, and that you will achieve it.

Weighing In:
My autumn challenge goal is to have a manuscript accepted (by an agent or a publisher) or self-publish one, by Christmas.

This week I finished the final edit of my memoir. I've written my proposal. I've submitted my pitch/query to an online forum for critique.

Next week's steps:
Write a synopsis of my memoir. Submit my proposal to three agents or publishers. Edit/rewrite the first five chapters of my historical fiction novel.

What goal will you try to accomplish by Christmas?
What will you do this week toward that goal?