I have officially re-entered the world of NaNoWriMo geekdom because I care again about whether or not I’m earning my badges. This dumb badge is virtual, not even a concrete thing I can attach to anything like the junior life saving badge my mom sewed on my bathing suit (a few years ago). Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself. Yikes.

I declare myself a NaNo Rebel with this badge. The purist form of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is not my project this year. Purists start with zero words in the month of November and pledge to draft 50,000 of a new novel by the end of the month. I love that process but not this year.  I’m using my NaNo November this time to get a complete next draft of Altitude Sickness. My personal goal is another 25,000 words (or so) to expand the tear-down and rebuild draft I completed in July and to reconnect to my Big Magic. You saw it here. Now I have to do it.

Malaise, wallowing in the swamplands, acedia (my new word for the week), writer’s block. Call it what you will–I’ve been bogged down. Started the cure this morning at my favorite coffee shop with some of my drugs of choice–20 ounce iced latte, new pens, a blank page. I would have added a Beethoven symphony at high volume, but forgot my earphones, and my presence in public forced me into quiet. The fog may be lifting. It looks like the Altitude Sickness story is coming home to me, or will be soon. It is Big Magic, as Elizabeth Gilbert says. I just have to keep believing in the Big Magic that has sent this story to me and compelled me to tell it.