"Becoming a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life."
I don't remember who said this, but it's oh so true. Especially in November.
It's an anual ritual: Every year on the stroke of midnight of November 1, I sit down in front of a white sheet, cursor blinking, crack my knuckles and take a deep breath. Put my fingers to the computer keys. Exhale. And... here we go.
Fifty-thousand words. One thousand, five hundred and ninety-three words per day. Can't be that hard, can it?
And at first it isn't. The words flow, my fingers flying over the keys (well, and hammering on the backspace/ delete key more often than not, but you get my drift.) It's sheer pleasure and joy.
Until it isn't, usually by the end of the first week. There's that annoying thing called real life getting into the way of the writing - work, bills, chores, dogs, stuffed nose (November has notorious flu-weather over here), choir concerts and birthday celebrations. There's sitting up at the PC until the wee hours, tap-tapping away until the letters blur on the screen. There's trying to focus on my work with my characters screaming in my head, but once I FINALLY get to sit down at the computer, the buggers give me the silent treatment.
And then there's watching that little progress bar crawl along a fraction of a milimeter every day despite everything. There's getting lost in my character's troubles to a point where I turn around, convinced I just felt them tapping my shoulder, only to find myself - surprisingly - alone. There's too much coffee and too little sunlight (Well, assuming the sun shines which sadly, seems to be the prospect for this year's November)
And then there's the point where I'm ready to chuck the whole business into the bin, add some Nitroglycerine and give the entire mess a good kick. To the moon and back.
I've done that, too.
But I've also ground my teeth and carried on stubbornly past that point.
I don't know which way my this year's NaNo-Project will go. To the scrap heap or to the beta?
Because kicking it feels SO damn good - like f*ck the whole cr*p, sweet freedom, here I come!
But finishing NaNo - it's writegasm. Really. With flowers and chocolates.
So either way, cross your fingers for me.
Let the madness begin!!
