Embracing the Crazy

During NaNoWriMo, it’s not uncommon to go a little crazy. Sometimes you find yourself writing a scene where your characters mock you and question your parentage, or when they discuss all the plot holes and the reasons why you shouldn’t be a novelist. And you’ll find yourself agreeing with them. It’s great.

Even if that doesn’t happen to you, at this point in the month, you’re still bracing for the home stretch. If you’re like me, you’re probably tired and ready to take a good long break over the holidays. You may not even feel like you can make it to the finish line without collapsing into a pile of words along the way. Rest assured, this last bit can be just as enjoyable as the rest, provided you recognize the humor in it.

You’ll find yourself typing sentences like, “I see Jude, sitting on a log, rotted and covered with leaves, the log not Jude.” Instead of being a responsible adult (if you’re an adult), you may put off washing laundry until the last possible moment. You may even forget what day it is. Every time you open your word document, you’ll remember something important like the fact that you haven’t flossed your pet barracuda’s teeth in far too long, and maybe you should go do that instead of writing. Or you may suddenly recall the fact that you have something called a family (which doesn’t like to be ignored), and another thing called a social life (which must be maintained somehow—or so they say). Like a greedy dragon, you might catch yourself spending an obsessive amount of time staring at your word count graph and thinking about how you can make it OH MY GOODNESS SO MUCH TALLER before the end of the month. 

At some point, you may be ill-fated enough to glance at the date and realize how little time you have left between now and the thirtieth, which might lead to a (minor) panic attack. So you’ll get to work and you’ll write a few hundred words. Then you’ll realize that you haven’t checked your Facebook messages in, like, five minutes. After that you’ll remember you should check your email, and also your watched threads on the NaNoWriMo forums. You’ll drink coffee and more coffee and at some point you’ll wonder when you decided to skip the mug and start drinking directly out of the coffee pot. Eventually you may find yourself eating the coffee grounds themselves because it’s much quicker that way.

Or you might sit down to write and find yourself accidentally opening Netflix instead. It happens. No doubt your fingers are forgetting how to type properly by now, so you’re probably really proud when you manage to spell at least every other word correctly. When you compare your word count with other people’s, you freak out because it seems like everyone ever is ahead of you and you just want to beat them (and I’m not talking about stats here). You realize that as much as you’re loving your novel, it’s not loving you back. So you drown your sorrows in more coffee, and you spend ages finding new music online.

All silliness aside, I get it—this is the hardest part of the month. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you’ll have to balance writing and eating and socializing, and that’s especially difficult if you’ve fallen behind. Not to mention (again) that you’re probably super tired already. And December is calling to you from just around the bend, reminding you of all the crazy busyness it has in store for you. So sprint now because you’re on the homestretch and you need to kick this novel’s bum. You can take a break from writing in December, but this is not December. Show the world who’s the boss, first. Then, and only then, do you have my permission to go insane.

Well, my little coffee beans. How is writing coming along? Are you looking forward to December, or would you rather petition the government to add thirty more days to November so you can write a bazillion more words?