We were at a party to launch National Novel Writing Month, which I was determined to try after watching enviously from the sidelines for the previous year or two. I had a setting, a beginning, an idea of the end, nothing in between and barely any characters, but in the NaNo spirit: NO PROBLEM. I soldiered dutifully ahead for about a week, churning through a handful of loosely connected scenes and about 30 handwritten pages before running aground in bafflement and exhaustion.
Almost exactly three years ago, I was curled on the living room loveseat, scowling into the computer with those old 30 pages sitting next to me while one or both of my kids screamed upstairs. I knew I was never going to get through the NaNo goal of 50,000 words in a month; if I hadn’t managed it in 2006, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it in 2013. But I’d written my Master’s thesis at a rate of two pages a day, and that seemed like an achievable goal for fiction. After all, nobody was ever going to read it and it was never going to go anywhere. But by god, I was going to write it.
And now, after spending the intervening time hauling that little ghost story in and out of zombie surgery, most recently with the help of literary agent and narrative necromancer Lana Popovic: IT LIIIIIIIIIVES.
Strap on your goggles and keep throwing the zombie guts at the wall. Your lightning strike is waiting.