NANO Anyone?

It's almost that time again. Are you ready? Can you take it? Have you tried it? Do you even know what NaNo is? November is National Novel Writing Month. NaNo for short. You clear the decks, come up with an idea and write. No excuses, no stopping, no revisions, just write for the entire month. Every day for a month you write. The goal is to complete 50,000 words, a complete first draft of a new novel. NaNo is not for the faint of heart. NaNo tests your staying power. It challenges you commitment. NaNo can become an obsession, a fire in your being that decrees you have to write.

My first experience with NaNo came several years ago and it was, I guess, what jump-started my desire to write.

You see, I'd given up writing several years before. Call it burn-out, disillusionment or life getting in the way. Whatever it was, it crippled my writing career. Like so many of my fellow writers, I came to the craft young, uninhibited and idealistic. I threw myself into the process at the deep end and promptly sank to the bottom of the writing pool. I allowed rejection to rob me of the pleasure of writing. My eager, tender, idealistic self was too thin-skinned for the real world of writing. The writing world passed me by while I sat on the sidelines. Of course, there were other things at play in my life that took away my writing time. The marriages and divorces of each of my children, the birth of my grandchild, earning two college degrees and building a career in education all played a role. But those things could not have stopped me from writing, had I not lost the spark than made we want to write in the first place.

NaNo was the thing that put the spark back into my desire to write. I ran across an article on the internet about it. When I read it I remembered the thrill of putting words on paper, the pleasure of crafting a story, the love of writing. For that month, I pushed all the daily events aside and I wrote. Every day, day in and day out, for the month of November. I didn't worry about getting it right, I wrote. I didn't worry about "the rules," I wrote. When the month ended I was able to type "the end" and print out a completed first draft of a novel. It was nothing short of magic!

The thrill was back, the sparkle was back, the pleasure was back. And the rest, as they say, is history! Scarlet was back!

NaNo anyone?