Hurdle

Every year I forget how tough the first day of NaNoWriMo turns out to be.

My excitement always fades a bit when Halloween passes into Writing Madness after all that build-up when I notice how long it actually takes to type something. And that's just the typing. The actual writing that pours out, turns out to be horrible as well.

It's especially noticeable to me because Nano means starting afresh. The horrors of an empty page with a tauntingly blinking cursor. I just finished editing a story into a shape I was very happy with the week before. Words were where they were supposed to be, characters seemed alive and carried an appearance, the ending didn't make me cry (at least, not in a bad way) and all in all, I didn't feel ashamed at the prospect of showing it to anyone.

Yet every year I forget that those stories start with a blank page and that hurdle always takes a while to get over. In November even more so.

Then I start to notice the bits and pieces buried in the needlessly wordy tangents and I can hear my brain hum: "There, that's the stuff. We'll cut the rest out later... No! I said later!"

NaNoWriMo Day One will always be the day I rediscover how to let my instinct do the talking.