We are, as you can probably tell, in the thick of NaNo ourselves, and having an absolute blast so far. Sure, it’s only day 3, but a successful NaNo is about making every day a little bit successful, in whatever way it’s possible to make it.

The last few months have been full of revisions and edits on various projects. Once we get in the headspace of make-every-word-and-comma-perfect, it can be hard to get out of that and just put words down on the page.

Which is, of course, what NaNo is great for. It’s a sprint, not a marathon. (Well,  it’s a marathon where you have to sprint for 30 days, which is its own kind of exhaustion). It’s about getting all the words out and worrying about flow and exposition and wait can we have divine right of kings in an atheistic nature-based society? Like how does that work? later.

It’s also great for collective encouragement. Twitter and Tumblr and basically every social media platform on the Internet that I’m watching is chock full of people posting their own status updates. And even if I don’t engage with those updates as much as I might like (too many words to make!) it’s good to know they’re there.

Because Doing the Thing is hard. Writing a novel in 30 days is hard. Life gets in the way. Ideas run dry. Other deadlines pop up. The kids or the cat or you get sick. But NaNo is all about seeing just how much we can fuck with those obstacles. Knowing other people are in the same boat can be the best kind of encouragement — after all, writing is hell in a vaccuum.

In a way, it’s no different than what we do every day. (After all, we write 365 days a year with each other). But NaNo is about everyone levelling up their game, seeing what it’s possible to do, and high fiving everyone who makes a damn fine effort.

So what’s your Thing this month? Tackling NaNoWriMo? NaBloPoMo? Maybe unfucking your room or your desk or some other aspect of your life? Let us know what it is, and we’ll send along a high five.