NaNoWriMo

Hear that tick-tick-ticking? I do too. It means that in a little over a month the starting gun goes off and we’re galloping willy-nilly toward some ridiculous 50,000 word writing goal. Preposterous. Crazy.

And I’m still going to do it. This won’t be my first rodeo. In fact, it will be my third and I know in my tired bones the insanity inherent in taking on such a project. I don’t care. There’s no feeling like slamming out those words every single day, and no feeling like finally limping inarticulate and finger-bone aching to the 50K finish.

A novel. Done. There it is.

You stumble out of your house into the world and tell perfect strangers in the WalMart checkout line. You tell your friends, even the ones who don’t write, and even though you realize most of them don’t give a tinker’s damn, you whisper hoarsely…fifty-thousand words. The friends who love you will give you carb-filled goodies and say bless your heart. And you nibble and smile and say yes, yes bless me.

But it’s not about the carbs or the blank stares at the WalMart checkout. This is about the kind of winning that tattoos itself on your DNA. No matter what else happens – if you are, God forbod, run flat by a Cotton Belt freight train – you finished a novel. It might be a first-draft messy bed, but it’s unmistakeably there.

Join me. I know there are a thousand reasons not to, but do it anyway. November will come and go and on December 1st you will either have a completed novel or you won’t. We all have stories that need telling, and yours could finally be told. Imagine looking at a stack of printed paper that is all you, all story, and imagine that finally and for once you did it.

Now go sign up at the National Novel Writing Month website and look for me. We’ll talk about planning and not planning another time – I have SCADS of handy advice that can make this the best month of your life. Seriously.

You can do this. We can do this.