Here we are:
Another November.
Another NaNoWriMo.
Another Fangsgiving.
Another hectic down-to-the-wire rush for some, and a “how did I get here, and why did I do this to myself again?” moment for others.
What with the bulging, red-rimmed eyes and over-caffeinated blood, and the sideways stares from loved ones, and the aching back from sitting in that position for too long, and wondering if that sentence fits there, and did you get all the research done, and what was that thing that had to be done, and did you get the dry cleaning (you just can’t remember, you have too much going on in your head to remember unnecessary things like that, right now), and dinner (What! Don’t they know its NaNo month? – you told everybody this was going to happen), and that run on sentence that you just can’t seem to fix; you wonder if it’s all worth it.
Yes, just take a deep breath. It’s almost over. Well, the hectic part is. The rush to slap down fifty thousand words in a sloppy rush is. The heaping pile of rough draft that no one can make any sense of is almost over. The late night, “what the hell was I on when I wrote that mess?” is almost over. Just take a deep breath and cross the line. Even if you don’t make the tally you run the race to the finish line. You do it because you started the journey, and the journey is worthy of the struggle.
December begins the real work. The making sense of the mess. The slogging through rabbit trails and putting the frayed ends together. NaNoWriMo is the beginning not the end. Now you have to put the pieces together and finish what you started. The mad dash is winding down and the tempered thought process needs to begin. Take another breath. Get more coffee. Stay up late. Shake off the looks. Talk to those characters and plunge on to the finish line. We need your story.
