NaNoWriMo Kickoff!

Today marks the frantic onset of National Novel Writing Month. Do you have your 1,667 words in today? Hehehe :) I sure as hell don’t.

Rather than focus on the word count, I’d rather explore the joy of writing today, especially since that’s something that’s easy for writers to lose track of in our daydreams of fame, fortune, and publication. Because that’s what it all comes down to: hands and a keyboard, or a pen or a crayon, and a drive so strong to put down word after word that it rises up and overwhelms everything else, that it’s more important than anything else, job, relationships, sleep, health. It’s easy to lose sight of having passion for the process when so many other things compete with it. We want to be good. We want to be published, to spend our days taking interviews, sipping coffee or green tea, talking about our greatness.

We want so many things.

Something we’re reminded to ask is whether we want the perceived trappings of being a writer or to actually sit down at our desks and place word after word, making a string of beads to worry and pick at later like a literary rosary. Because that is what it all comes down to: passion for stringing words together, reaching with two hands, grasping for words in the dark, to bring them to light and impale them on our beading strings.

So happy NaNo everyone. Be productive and passionate and don’t get lost in the dark.