Dear Writers,
NaNoWriMo is one of the most exciting months. The thrill of the blank pages that will soon be filled with words, the late nights, the early mornings, the endless cups of coffee, the camaraderie, and the promise of a new novel idea. So many of you will gather around the world pull your stories into a complete work of art.
The thing I want you to remember most is that you can do it—but you have to be resilient. The definition of resilient is:
You are more than capable of recovering from difficult situations.
You will be tested during this month. It is, after all, the month of Thanksgiving. School is winding down and the holidays are approaching. You’re going to want to give up. Instead of simply telling you “don’t give up,” I want to say: Finishing your novel is the greatest gift you can give yourself. If you’re doubting yourself or your writing, remember that you cannot fix anything that isn’t written on the page. If you want to reach your writing goals then the first thing you should accomplish is finishing.
I had a student who asked about rough drafts. She didn’t understand exactly what a rough draft was. Naturally, I turned to food as an example. I gave her the example of making pancakes. First you have to mix all your ingredients together. This will be called the preliminary stage. You are gathering your ideas and mixing them together to create the formula, A.K.A. your idea and plot. Then you have to pour the mixture into a pan and wait for the mixture to turn solid. You might flip the pancake over and over in order to cook it through the middle. This can be equated to the actual writing. Sometimes you might even drop that pancake and it may lose a little bit of its form. But you use that spatula to keep shaping it and flipping it until it’s finally the most beautiful, golden pancake under the sun. That’s kind if how writing works. You’re going to be throwing a ton of ingredients together and then you’re going to shape it, and if you do the work, if you just stick with it and are patient with that pancake, then you’re going to have a delicious, fluffy pancake.
When you finally get to eat that pancake, it’s going to be so satisfying.
