It's amazing how quickly you can go from "50,000 words in thirty days? Great idea! Let's do it!" to "Why didn't someone hit me with a pie when I said that?"
It's a bit like the double-dog dare. Before I knew it, I had my tongue stuck to the flagpole.
I don't know if it speaks well of me that I was so relieved to see the calendar page flip over to December, but I definitely felt a weight lift from my shoulders as it happened. I also admit that this was the impetus necessary to uncork an idea I've been unable to get down on paper for quite some time. And much like the kid in the movie cursed with a bad case of flagpole tongue, I couldn't have made it here without a bit of pressure from my friends.
Dierdre Sargent, Maggie Secara and Joel Reid were the three people most active in my long-distance Facebook writing group. These three were my constant companions, challengers and cheerleaders in this endeavor and admitting defeat to them kept me stuck to the project when I wanted to throw it aside in disgust halfway through.
Gladly, I stuck with it and found paths through and around the rough patches and to these three should be apportioned a fair share of both credit and blame. Each will find their names in the acknowledgments of the book if I ever develop it from its current state into an actual publishable project.
Luckily, hot coffee is good for getting tongues off of flagpoles.
Anyway, the current edition of that story is now printed-out and sitting on my desk in a folder, practically obscured by all the notes, post-its and red ink. Such is the life-cycle of the novel.
If you didn't finish your NaNoWriMo, you can always join NaNoFiMo http://www.nanofimo.org/ so that you can join everyone in March for NaNoEdMo http://www.nanoedmo.net/ at which point you are at risk of slipping over the fabled Meme Event Horizon and into the black hole of the internet. As for me, I will be celebrating NaNoNapMo (National Novelist Napping Month).
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/
(No actual internet memes were harmed in the creation of this blog post. All meme activity was monitored by the American Humeme Society.)
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Pages to Type is a blog about books, writing and literary culture (with the occasional digression into coffee and the care and feeding of giant robots).