Tomorrow is the midway point to NaNoWriMo. Halfway through November. Halfway done. 25000 words, in the bag. You’re writing, hopefully, frantically probably, ignoring all the rules of grammar and most of the rules of spelling, in order to get the words out as quickly as possible. Your document is full of the red and blue and green squiggles of Word asking, ‘You know that’s not a word, right?” And you don’t’ care.

Because grammar, spelling, hyphens, contractions, pithy dialogue and beautiful descriptions are all December problems.

November is a month for just letting it all hang out. Letting the words flow, ugly as they may be. NaNo is for what I call my zero draft. A draft so ugly, I can’t even call it a first draft. It’s the draft before the rough draft. It’s like an outline, with bits of dialogue and description and in-draft notes like, ‘ Maude says something mean here.’ November means that on the 14th, you still have characters named things like, ‘New Guy’ and ‘Other Lady’ because you can’t possibly remember the name of every character you create.

November is four weeks of exhilaration, panic, joy, sleeplessness bordering on insomnia, or waking up in the middle of the night with the perfect run of dialogue on the tip of your tongue and you have to scribble it on your arm because the notepad you keep on your nightstand for just such occasions has mysteriously wandered off.

November is the time for run on sentences so long they become paragraphs of their own.

Because making sense is a December problem.

Happy wording.

♥SB