Post-NaNo Thoughts

It's unanimous. I feel happier and more energetic when I'm writing. The household has indicated very firmly that I'm considerably easier to live with when I'm writing. Something about the process drains off despair and self-loathing. And when I get the time alone I need, the time living in my own imagination, I’m more able to be more fully present with them when we spend time together.

So I have to keep on. The question is, what's a reasonable amount per day or per week to set as a goal? I can't keep up the 50K a month. But 5,000 a week might be reasonable. To do that, I would need to write something like 600 words a day, plus extra on weekends. I think I can manage that. It also works with the plans of the other local NaNoWriters. We’re planning to keep on meeting, both for writing sessions and for editing/critique groups. I’ve already said my novel should be ready for critique in February or March. That's a commitment.

This is exactly what I’ve been wanting, a writers’ community with bright, dedicated people. I’ve been impressed by the intelligence, magnanimity, and all-around wonderfulness of the local folks. They are very high on my list of people to thank in my acceptance speech for the NaNobel Prize for Fast Literature.

Here's my current draft of the speech:

Huge thanks to Chris Baty and the NaNo staff, not to mention all those weasels who gave their lives that human beings might have something to bet on.

Heartfelt thanks to my friends and partner for enduring me through all the moods: eager, snarly, despairing, and jubilant, and for putting up with my absence of mind and body this past month. (Sometimes I wonder if they enjoyed my absence too much.)

Warm thanks to the local NaNoWriters (cool beyond words), the staffs of various cafes and wine bars, and the other wonderful NaNoWriters who posted support and encouragement and twisted queries.

Thanks to Antony and Doreen for supplying music CDs, Steve and Steve for inventing the Mac, and all the musicians, including the Indigo Girls, Joan Osborne, Eric Clapton, Mozart, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Thanks to my medical advisers, Juan Valdez and Dr. “Diet” Pepper. The operation to remove the toothpicks from my eyelids is scheduled for next week.

Whoever invented Pringles, I hope you spend years in purgatory being made into slurry, pressed out in an unnatural form, deep fried, spray-painted with fluorescent fake flavor powders, stacked in cans, manhandled into shards, sold at Walmart, devoured at midnight by depressed writers, excreted the next day by same, made into slurry. . . .