Signs in the Sky

For days now, I've walked outside to a cacophony of birds. They are filling the trees and for random reasons taking to the skies to hover overhead before settling back into the bare, black branches.
Today, as Earl and I headed out for a walk, the neighbor was in his backyard with a hose in his hand.
"Don't spray the dogs," I joked. He dotes on the dogs.
"I'd like to spray those darn birds. Why don't they head south?" the neighbor asked.
Earl said he thought they were grackles, dark birds with spots on their backs.
All along the walk, the birds would land on the grass or in the trees -- chattering and chattering before they shot into the sky again.


I tried over and over to get a photo of the grackles filling in the sky. I missed everytime.

And I didn't think anything about it. I mean, I tried to get a picture, thinking the photo of the birds in the sky might go well with my new novel A Charm of Finches, which is what a flock of finches is called.
I even looked up what a group of grackles is called -- it's a plague of grackles.
But I didn't make the connection that the sole purpose of the bird-filled trees might be to serve as inspiration for my novel. Why didn't I see that they were signs to me? (Do you think that's too self serving?)
The birds are filling the trees and the skies to remind me to keep writing.
It's either that or they're preparing for a remake of the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Oh, I hope they're just here for inspiration.

NaNoWriMo Ends

Usually, if I don't write 50,000 words toward a novel as part of National Novel Writing Month, I would consider it a failure. I only wrote 25,000 words in November, but I'm not beating myself up about it. I wrote more than I might have if I wasn't doing NaNoWriMo.
When I started, I planned to continue writing my memoir An American Nanny in France. But as I started writing, I realized that I wasn't feeling it.
Instead, an image kept coming back to me that one of my friends had told me about during her childhood. As we were running one day, a flock of birds flew overhead and Stephanie said, "That's how many people will be at my wedding." She said it was thing they said when they were little kids.
So that is the image I began my new novel with. Three little girls playing in a field when a flock of birds flew over. Then the novel jumps ahead to one of those girls as a grown up who is not satisfied with her life. She's a near agoraphobic and has cut off most of her social ties. She decides to change her life through feng shui and channeling her childhood friends. 
I'm calling the novel "A Charm of Finches," which is what a flock of finches is called.
So, I didn't succeed at NaNoWriMo, but I'm not counting it as a failure. I started a new novel and I have nearly a third of it written, so that can't be all bad, right?