Winner, Wiener, Whiner

 or What Does a Winner Do After Winning?

Right now, all I can think about is that line from the movie Shark Tale when Oscar says, "Wait, Lola, I'm not a nobody, I'm a wiener." Because instead of feeling like a winner, I feel like a wiener. You see, you're probably thinking that after winning NaNoWriMo I just sat down, took it easy, basked in my glory and gave up on writing. And you wouldn't be too far from the truth considering that it's been about five months since my last blog post. There was something about writing a 50,000 word novel that resulted in what appears to be a complete writing moratorium on my part, but not really. I've actually been doing a lot of writing, that is, if you count posting on Facebook, writing text messages, writing responses to e-mails, writing and whining in my iPad journal, and now writing cutesy titles for my boards on Pinterest. In short, I've been doing absolutely anything and everything to get out of revising my NanoWriMo draft.

Then one day not too long ago I found myself pondering a Mark Twain quote that keeps making its rounds on Facebook. It goes like this:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

At that point reality hit me on the head and I realized that  I only had about six months until NaNoWriMo started again. That little voice inside my head, that same little voice which kept saying that I needed a few weeks to regroup after NaNoWriMo before revising the novel. That same voice which kept saying that I needed to just forget the whole thing. That same voice which made the New Year's resolution to have a working draft of my novel ready before the end of the year. Yes, that voice, just told me that I needed to finish what I started.

Because when I really thought about it, I realized that years from now, when I looked back on my experience with NaNoWriMo, I would regret not having a finished draft of my novel more than I would regret giving up because the story would never be perfect.

In short, I'm back and I will finish that novel, even if it turns out to be silly.