Hello, CSU. It is a beautiful Sunday morning as I am writing this, and I’m feeling better now about NaNo than I have all month. No, I’ve not caught up with my word count, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The week before last was quite rough. My goal had been to reach 10,000 words, but by the time last Sunday rolled around I was only at 8,000. In my last post I wanted to publicly announce my goal to reach 10,000 words, but I knew that if I did that I would be bound by my word, and that scared me. So what happened? I didn’t reach my goal. How cowardly of me, right? I will not make that mistake again. If I want to win NaNo this year I’ve got to be serious about setting goals for myself and sticking to them.

On Monday night last week something amazing happened. I was sitting at home with no homework and nothing all that interesting to do, and my laptop sat there on my table, staring at me. Its screen was dark, there were a few stray cat hairs on the keyboard, and it looked so intimidating that I actually thought about scooting over on the couch so as to be a bit further away from it. But then I realized: Hey! I’m a writer, and I want to make my living crafting stories for others to enjoy. And how the heck am I going to do that if my writing platform scares me away? So I didn’t scoot away from my laptop, I scooted toward it. And then I got a little closer, and a little closer, until I was right there, close enough to reach out and touch it. So that’s what I did, and at first, it was rough. The words were stuck, and when they did come they walked with a hitch and stumbled around a lot. But I didn’t give up. I kept writing, kept working, and when I closed my laptop that night I’d written approximately 2,400 words. That was the most I had written in one day in the entire month, and it gave me hope. It was that spark I needed to get me out of my writing slump and start chasing after the NaNoWriMo bandwagons again.

I’m still chasing those wagons, but I’m getting a little closer every day. I’m currently over 15,000 words, but still not even halfway to 50,000. Sure, I’ve only got eight days left, but I am going to make each and every one of those days count. I’m home until Wednesday, and it was over Thanksgiving break last year that I kicked my writing into high gear and was able to run across that finish line just in the knick of time. So wish me well on my journey, because I’ll be returning to you battered and bruised.

Natalie can be reached at blogs@collegian.com