Debbie Talley
Among Friends 

I’m celebrating my love/hate relationship with writing this month. If you’re a writer (or not!) you know what I’m talking about when I refer to this love/hate bond.

You adore verbs that make your sentences thrilling, and abhor “be” verbs that languish among your paragraphs. You love the rush of writing in the flow, but hate writer’s block. You relish the beauty of a well-written sentence and despise the evasive headline. I’m going to learn to manage these feelings and I’m dedicating the entire month of November to doing it.

From Nov. 1-30, I’ll write every single day … at least 1,700 words a day. And at the end of November, I’ll have written more than 50,000 words — enough for a short novel.

This crazy idea came to me by way of my good friend, Ruth, who stumbled upon Nanowrimo — or National Novel Writing Month. A couple of years ago, Ruth signed up, wrote 50,000 words and voila — a novel. I don’t know what she did with it, I never read it. But … what an accomplishment!

At some point during her sojourn, I thought I’d get in on the action and was going to sign up. Sadly, procrastination is a good buddy of mine and I figured that I couldn’t write 50,000 words in the two days I had left that November of two years ago.

This year, I remembered Nanowrimo in late-October, signed up, participated in the meet and greet, befriended fellow Nano writers, and I’m even going on a retreat.

Success — within my grasp! That’s disregarding story, themes, plot lines, character development, and genre, all of which I have no clue about!

I’ve been assured that the key is to just start writing and continue to write. The novel, buried deep within, will emerge sometime during November. I hope it will present itself earlier than later.

Don’t get me wrong. Like Jerry Seinfeld’s show about “nothing,” I imagine I have the capacity to write 50,000 words about “nothing.” I don’t think the novel will be near as entertaining as his hit show … but it’s a start!

I figure if I can get started and keep writing, I’ll be able to make it through. And by 50,000 words, I don’t mean writing the same word 50,000 times. Someone actually thought of that: clever but defeating.

I won’t count the 500-word articles that I write for the Herald or the 100 words I write in countless e-mails. From my imagination, I will pull 50,000 special words for my novel and hope they birth a strong main character, a tight story, and flowing plot lines. In 30 days, I’ll force cohesive sentences through my pen to the point of inspiration, in hopes of producing my first novel.

And maybe I won’t let anyone read it; and maybe it won’t be the next greatest American novel – but I will have met one of my lifelong goals. And as for that love/hate relationship? I’m positive I will come to terms with it and it may not disappear but that’s OK — as long is there is much more love than hate.

Debbie Talley, a Randolph Ro-Hawk, UTSA and Baylor alum, can be reached at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it