NaNoWriMoment

I am several thousand words behind on my NaNoWriMo novel. This has me distressed, slightly.

Also, I am over 5,000 words into my NaNoWriMo novel! Wow! That's more fiction than I've written in over ten years!

It's all about perspective.

FACT: I am going to write a novel

So, NaNoWriMo begins tonight...in 12 hours and 2 minutes, to be anxiously exact.

I feel a nervous, giddy excitement. It's not that I think I'm going to "win" (make 50k words by 11/30) or birth some epic tome that will catapult me to literary heights. It's not that I expect to get my novel published. It's that I have a story inside me that I believes deserves a telling and I am finally going to let it out.  I'm exhaling after holding the breath of my own creativity for 15 years.

Ahhhhhhh.

It Fits

I know I'm doing the right thing by putting several toes--maybe a whole foot?--in the water, even though I am afraid.

 I know this because even though I worked overnight and it's well past my bedtime, I can't settle into sleep. I'm full of character ideas, plot points, beautiful words, questions, fears, tasks, emotional discomfort and a familiar, electric thrill that always comes when I'm onto something.

So:

1. I am so very tired.
2. I am onto something!

Three days until my first National Novel Writing Month. I am more than excited about the opportunity to dust off a whole part of me I'd stored away more than 15 years ago. I am joyful.