"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

H. Jackson Brown

I am at over 32,000 words now, on my way to 35,000.  I can’t help but be proud of myself for taking the leap into the unknown and trusting that I will fall safely on the other side. I want my daughter to look up to me with wide eyes and wonder how I did it. And then she will follow in my footsteps, and follow her own dreams.

I’m currently reading “Zen in the Art of Writing” by the infamous Ray Bradbury.  The chapter I read today seemed to be perfect for this crazy thing called NaNo.  He says the following:

“Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents’ window long ago.”

Before NaNo, I’d always say “Oh, I’m blocked”.  Or “I don’t have time”.  I’ve discovered through NaNo that one way to avoid writer’s block is to keep on writing. L. M. Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gable stories, wrote, "There is no power that so speedily rusts as that of expression. So to work at once, stick to it, write something every day, even if you burn it up after writing it." And Ray Bradbury tells us, "You must write every single day of your life."

How true.

 ~ Kathy