It’s November 1st, and when I woke up this morning I realized that it is also Day One of National Novel Writing Month. Oh yeah, I thought, it’s time to write a novel. Right.
It’s a crap month for it. Forget Thanksgiving and international travel and all the usual work and life-related distractions, we’ve got a lot going on right now and some of it is challenging. So I’m busy, distracted, tired, and in no way ready to write a book in a month on top of everything else.
I’ve “won” NaNo before so it’s not like I have much to prove. I could skip a year and the world wouldn’t end.
…
And that’s exactly why I’m going to do it. It may not be the best work I’ve ever done or the longest, but I will do it. One of the most important requirements of being a writer is to, well, write. The discipline required to consistently put words down on the page is what trips up a lot of people, what sometimes trips me up, and this is a perfect opportunity to use an external constraint (a month-long deadline) to support internal goals. It’s said that “performance is a function of expectations” and NaNoWriMo is a terrific example of that in action.
So here goes. And hey, what she said:
“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
– Nora Roberts
Go Jen! I sense that all of New Zealand is behind you.
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