On Writing After NaNoWriMo

As it turns out, when you commit to producing a novel in a month, it doesn’t leave much time for other writing. When you do have free time, you find yourself wanting to do anything (run, read, daydream … you name it) other than plop yourself down in front of the computer as you attempt to string words together into coherent sentences. Then, the end of the month comes, and it is suddenly December and the holidays are rushing at you like a freight train and you’ve just written a ridiculous number of words in thirty days and you feel as though you need a moment or a week or a year to catch your breath.

And so, if you have a blog, even a brand-new, sparkly, exciting blog which you have told yourself you want to update regularly, that blog might go ignored and unnoticed for more than a month, especially if next-to-nobody knows about that blog yet. Even if you have many, many wonderful ideas (or not so wonderful ideas, as the case may be). Even if you read books that inspire you to write, that make you itch to begin weaving words into stories again. Even if you tell yourself that really, maybe, blog posts are more up your alley than novels are.

Your blog begins to gather dust, and you begin to forget that you even have such a thing as a blog, but then one night you decide to give this thing another go. You forget how to type a post, how to get this thing started, and so you sit and stare at the computer screen as though the words will somehow magically appear if only you wait long enough, if only you will them to come. When this fails, you slowly begin to peck out the words, one at a time, and because you don’t know what else to say, you peck out words describing your excuses for not writing in so very long.

Suddenly, you realize that you have a blog post. One that is mostly an excuse, one that doesn’t say very much, really. But it is a post nonetheless. It is a start. Perhaps that is enough, for now. Perhaps it is enough to get the momentum going again, to start the flow of words. And perhaps, tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, you will come back and write again.

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