NaNoWriMo Day 27

Word total: 50,301.

27 days. 21 of me at the keyboard. One head cold. One national holiday. One dentist appointment. 6 bowls of General Tso. A couple dozen Diet Pepsi or C2 cans or bottles. Countless replays of Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief."

I did it. I got to 50,000. I'm not done with the novel, but I beat NaNoWriMo. I can do 50k in 30 days if I want. I can do anything. I am a writer, and that's the bravest thing I've ever written.

I didn't know if I could do it. My wife and I thought I'd meltdown in more places. I lost my way as far as scenes went, but I wrote 50,000 words. They all need work, but I can push myself to believe in a vision to create another 50,000 words. I can make it the rest of the way. I can finish the novel, this beautiful mutant before me.

Right now, I'm strung out with emotion. I rarely accomplish what I set out to do. I never had much ambition. I always put things off, having the darker voices in my head scare me away. Now, I can always say I wrote 50,000 words in under a month. I'll probably flinch at the prose when I read it all in a couple weeks after I get done with the novel, but tonight I feel pride radiating out of my as if my chest was the sun.

There is a messy beauty to this, a type of slippery magic when I write, as if I'm chasing my imagination while running from the inner demons who are a ruthless team of assassins sent to topple to my fragile pillars of hope and wonder. We're all running on some psychic ice, and tonight I had the best traction, finding the balance to move beyond the demons and into where I want to go, the place where I want to be. It is an amazing feeling, as if you could challenge gods and kings and become sunlight at your merest thought.

Tonight, I'm alive.

Song of the evening: "You Only Live Twice," the Bjork remake. Found it online and downloaded it. it's an orphan from a now-nixed project to have modern music stars remake Bond songs. It never came to be, but Bjork's version of the Nancy Sinatra classic remains in perfect carbonite preservation on the Internet.

Tonight, of all nights, the last pair of lines seem to have their own radiant symbolism. I know it's corny, and I know the dream about love, but, as I said, it fits well right about now.

"This dream is for you, so pay the price/Make one dream come true, you only live twice."