I interrupt our coverage of Tokyo with the last day of National Novel Writing Month. At the beginning of November, I took on National Novel Writing Month—a challenge to writers to complete a minimum of 50,000 words on a novel during the thirty days of November. I signed up to give myself a deadline…to see what might be possible. I had no experience writing novels. I didn’t outline beforehand. I didn’t have any character sketches done. I didn’t know the beginning, the middle, or the end. I just signed up and showed up to write my words on November 1 and kept writing every day. On my best day, I cleared nearly 5,000 words. On my worst—dead dog sick, I still got 900 words done. I finished the draft at just over 51,000 words on November 21^st.

Characters showed up I didn’t know existed, settings jumped through my fingers, a man was murdered, and a family secret uncovered and passed on to the next generation. I can’t believe I got it all down. Oh, it’s far from perfect, and the real work of revision can begin once the story has rested. I loved every blessed minute. I got up excited to get to work. I didn’t feel bound by constraints…I wrote like my hair was on fire and finishing my word count was the straight path to water. I need to write this way more often. I realized this month that I give the inner critic thug too much voice—too much space and he squelches a lot of the fun.

It reminds me so much of doing half-marathons. Before I trained for the first one, I thought there was no way I could do it…I thought running long distance was for other people. Then, I signed up, showed up, and ran one day at a time. I’ve done eight half marathons in three years—how can that be possible?

I need to shut down that voice that says, “That’s crazy,” “You couldn’t…” “It’s too hard.” Time to shut him down and get to work.