Once again, I find myself in the middle of NaNoWriMo, and was keeping up with writing every day when real life intruded. I got my start writing creative nonfiction trying to make sense of and add perspective to my real life experiences. But it got so hard to keep running into walls, and writing speculative fiction lets me walk through them, which is a lot less painful.

I begin weekdays with a five thirty am alarm, a hellish commute, and days full of heartbreaking tales of neglect, poverty, trauma and the aftermath. I love my work,  but after eight to twelve hours, five days a week, doing anything but collapsing when I get home is usually impossible. NaNoWriMo has always been helpful to make progress on stalled projects. And this one, a gritty urban fantasy set in the South Bronx with Puerto Rican characters, fell way behind schedule while I…