Today, I toast my friends who did NaNoWriMo this year. Whether you hit your magic mark or not, you stuck with it. You wrote as often as you could. You did so because this is your art and your passion. You wrote when the muse was with you, and did your best when the muse was silent. You wrote whether you were feelin’ it or not. You pushed forward when it was hard. You wrote even when the very act of writing did not dispel your doubts. You felt the fear of failure and frustration and uncertainty, and did it anyway. You heard your internal editor nagging and you put that on pause. You did not allow distractions to sway you. You wrote to the end. You are champions.

As we enter the nerve-jangling months ahead of rewrites and beta-reads and edits, know that Writerghoulie is very proud of you, and I celebrate your tenacity.

Well done, furious scribblers. Well done.

<Gonna drink one of these to toast you…then drink the other to, uh, because I can?>

So what comes next, as we head into December? Oh, no, my little scribblers, the work is far from over. We now enter some familiar territory….

If you hear weird noises, it’s just me wailing like a howler money while pulling my hair out, sobbing, blowing my nose on crumpled manuscript papers and throwing a proper mid-edit tantrum. No worries…just send Fireball whiskey.