by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo
Last night, we watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. (Is it possible to grow tired of those old Peanuts shows? I don’t think it is.) Linus is fearless and hopeful in the pumpkin patch; he’s steadfast in his belief that the Great Pumpkin will visit. His tenacity is admirable. Linus finds a most sincere pumpkin patch—“nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” He believed.
This is my last post for October. Monday is November first—the first day of NaNoWriMo.
It’s time for a little fearless writing.
I am excited and terrified. It will be my second time participating and I can’t quite tell if I am less frightened because I know what I am in for or more frightened because I know what I am in for. I do know after having etched one notch in my laptop, that the spirit of NaNo is a palpable and bolstering force. Especially if you surround yourself with a little community. My NaNo buddies are in New York, Colorado, Michigan, but the distance doesn’t matter. It’s as if we’re all in the pumpkin patch together.
It is a daunting task, no doubt about it. 50,000 words in 30 days. And it’s not as though life stops in November. NaNo works because it’s a finite space of time. And the promise of such a big chunk of work at the end is very motivating. You just close your eyes and jump on the speeding train and when you jump off on December first, you might just have something pretty amazing in your hands.
But more than anything, you simply have to believe you can do it. There can be no ifs. That’s where Linus ran into trouble: he said, “If the Great Pumpkin comes… Good grief, I said ‘if’… I’m doomed…” He planted a little seed of doubt.
When attempting—nay, setting out to accomplish NaNo, one can nourish no seeds of doubt.
Is this magic? No—I suppose it’s how we should always write.
Book Giveaway!
Don’t forget to enter our upcoming book giveaway! Read The Writer’s Life Q&A with Catherine Gildiner on November 3rd, share your thoughts and qualify to win a copy of her book, After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties! See the announcement for details.
Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo is a writer, reader, yogini (when she can squeeze it in), mom, part-time Office Manager, a homemaker and the Coordinator and Writer for The Writer’s Life blog. She loves to cook and take long walks with her kids and is a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Currently she works at a web development company (because part-time Office Manager buys more groceries than Struggling Writer). She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Melissa lives in North Central Massachusetts with her family.
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About Melissa Corliss Delorenzo
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Thanks, Sandy. I woke up this morning very early with all kinds of ideas forming about my project – I can’t wait until Monday! (Oh, and we watched “The Great Pumpkin” again tonight!)
Good luck, Melissa! Lovely connection to The Great Pumpkin…a classic.
Thanks, Kathleen. It really has grown – I remember hearing about it for years and thinking there was no way I could do it. I was just “too busy.” Well, I couldn’t be more busy now and yet, somehow it gets done. I am actually really looking forward to it! Thanks for your good wishes!
Love your orange & blue pumpkin patch. Best wishes with the November novel experience. I know a lot of people who are doing it, so it’s a really big pumpkin patch.