You ever have one of those moments when you just know you got something licked?
Maybe it happened in January of your senior year in high school.
Or maybe it happens every week about noon on Friday.
Heck, maybe it’s even when catch your first sight of plate when gnawing through a huge pile of spaghetti … you got this!
For me, that feeling is one of the great joys of NaNoWriMo, and one that I pretty much forget about until it sneaks up on me each year. It happens like this …
You’re plugging along, banging out your 1667 or 2000 or 500 words a day, and it seems like a long way to the end of the month. You keep pushing, though, writing in the mornings and the evenings, at lunch and at dinner.
Your story moves along, and you start to enjoy the process.
And then, one day, you realize you’ve got 35,000 words done on November 15, and all of the sudden … you got this.
That inflection point is different for everyone, and it’s even different for me from year to year. But it’s unmistakable when you hit it, and it really gets your juices flowing, let me tell you.
Those numbers up there are mine, right now — 35,000 words on November 15 — and I’m sure now that I got this. Unless I wake up tomorrow with a different brain or find a contract to right the next Star Wars screenplay in my mailbox, I’m finishing this novel.
By November 30, if not well before.
It’s an exciting feeling, one that makes me want to just keep writing — I can sleep when I’m dead, and all that.
And, like I said above, it’s one of the great parts of NaNoWriMo, and one that lets you know for sure that you can write a novel.
Beware, though — once you find your writing inflection point, you’ll want to experience it again and again.
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