On Your Mark, Get Set...

Happy Halloween, everyone. As you're bingeing on chocolate from your treat bag, let me tell you a very scary story....

It's down to a matter of hours.

Starting at midnight, I'm officially allowed to start writing my novel for NaNoWriMo. (And thank you for all of the supportive emails that I've received. Nice to know at least someone thinks I can pull this off!) Part of me is very excited and is ready to start right now, and part of me wants to crawl into bed and hide under the blankets until it's December.

I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. I have a plot, I have characters, and many of the scenes have been preliminarily planned in my head. I've been carrying around a couple of books about how to write your first novel in my bag. (No, I haven't read them. Are you kidding? I've been too busy panicking.) I've written an outline on 3x5 cards, and placed them in the order that I think they should go at this point. My 7th grade English teacher would be thrilled.

But the nagging doubts are closing in. I'm afraid I won't be able to figure out where to begin and will spend three days struggling over the first sentence. I'm afraid I won't have time to work on writing with my job and day-to-day household duties. I'm afraid that my cat will not take kindly to being ignored and tear down the curtains in protest.

I'm afraid that I'll end up becoming a hermit, turning down all social plans to spend my nights slumped over the keyboard wrestling with plausible ways to get my characters from point A to point B.

I'm afraid that I'll spend the entire month living on Pop-Tarts, Hot Pockets, coffee, and Diet Coke. Oh, wait. I already do that, don't I?

I'm afraid that I'll not have enough time to take breaks to watch Buffy (next week is the musical episode... cannot... stop... laughing...) or go see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Or Monsters, Inc. Why are all the movies that I have waited for all year coming out now?

I'm afraid that Roger Mexico will arrive in town for the Thanksgiving holidays to find me a raving lunatic living in an apartment not fit for human residence, and will run away screaming from the scary woman in the bathrobe muttering about word count and denouements. I'm afraid he'll decide to spend his entire vacation sleeping on Andy's couch.

I'm afraid that I will stay up countless nights toiling over my creation, only to have my computer crash moments before the deadline.

I'm afraid that I'll finish the damn thing, think it's actually pretty good, and let other people read it. I'm afraid that they will think it's a big steaming pile of poo, but will tell me how great it is just to placate me.

But most of all, I'm afraid that I'll give up by November 5th and go drown my failures in too many pints of Bass Ale.

I'm sure that everyone that signed up for this month of insanity is having similar bouts of paranoia. I guess that's why the folks that are running the contest recommended signing up with a buddy. Things always seem easier when you've got someone who can relate to your situation, right?

At least I've got a few partners to share my frustration. Besides my friend at work, Musashi from Destroy All Monsters and Paisley in New Orleans have decided to share in the fun. Or what I'm hoping will be fun, at least. And we've all decided that this is a sure sign that we've all lost our minds. Oh well, I suppose it will keep us out of trouble for a while.

At least until December 1st. And then there'll be a whole months worth of mischief to catch up on.

The clockwatching continues, and the butterflies in my stomach have obviously been doing crystal meth.