The End ~ a note for WriMos in their final week

“The End”As we approach the end of the month – and hopefully the end of our novels – we hear the roar of the crowds up ahead as others cross the finish line and earn their bright purple winner’s widget. Chris Baty seems to think this energizes us, but I’m finding that I am slogging along in a funk, wondering which way is the finish line. I am more tired than I expected to be, less sure (not more) that these words come close to being a novel at all. But it truly is almost over. If we can hold on three more days – today, tomorrow, and Friday – we will have survived a crash course in writing. A novel? Maybe some day. A first draft? At the moment I’m not even sure mine is that. A bunch of words? Okay, a bunch of words that may or may not be something that can be polished into a work of art. But … but …

I have exercised my imagination muscle in ways it never thought it could move!

And now I can imagine being a “real” writer. Ahem, let me explain that. A writer is one who writes, right? And we have all been doing that. Hurray for us! “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.” That’s a quote from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which I have posted on the sidebar of my Weekend Wordsmith blog, here:
http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/

Having writ, as Omar Khayyam says, it is now almost time for us to move on. Some of us will move on to revision of our masterpieces; some of us will simply move on. If it turns out, upon close inspection, that we have not written the greatest novel of the twenty-first century, then we are free to pick a fragment from this month’s efforts and expand on that … or write about any idea that crosses our expanded minds … because we can all say now that we are writers. Try it. Repeat after me:

“I am a writer!”

There! Didn’t that make you feel better?