Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Well, I guess it's not really wicked. It's just one of a writer's longest and craziest holidays of the year. It's like an enormous Holiday party with all of your favorite people with all of their favorite characters. There's dancing, drinking, general partying, and the always-amazing after party.

I, of course, am referring to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which comes in ten days. I'm quaking with excitement just by typing this. Or maybe it's the caffeine.

NaNoWriMo isn't really a party, in fact most of it is spent with you and your laptop. But there is drinking and dancing, by which I mean fingers dancing over keys as you strive to make your 1,667 word benchmark every day and drinking a blur of caffeine-laced sodas, coffees, and nameless energy drinks to keep yourself awake to continue writing until your fingers go numb. The aforementioned parties come on the first of December, where you celebrate the word count you finish with, 50,000 or not, and the after party of meeting up again with your real-life author friends and talking about your crazy month-long writefest.

Not to mention a great prize: Those who complete 50,000 words receive five free copies of their books published, just like real manuscripts. I've already started a list of who my five copies go to. I can't wait.

But for those of you who don't write, NaNo isn't a straight month of being cooped up in the house writing by yourself in the dead of night. It really is a great time. I have a bunch of friends doing it: Hannah, Frankie, Meg, and a bunch of others. There are write-ins where NaNo authors come to a place and write together, like in Paneras and my 'writing home', Thurber House, the house of author and cartoonist James Thurber. It's an old Victorian home full of old pianos, even older couches, and a resident ghost. It's a writer's paradise.

So if you see people hurrying around with bags under their eyes, their fingers twitching as they clamp a Starbucks cup, know that those are probably some of my fellow authors who are working to accomplish a full-length novel manuscript in a month. Give them a nod, or even a cup of coffee if you're feeling generous. Who knows, they might be in the process of creating the next big thing.

Falling leaves and black cats,
Brie