Day 25: Don't Panic but it's a Deadline

Looming deadlines are things that either send us into a blinding panic or motivate us to write as we have never written before.

Take a deep breath and have a piece of chocolate, go to your happy place. You there? Good now stay calm, there’s a deadline coming up fast, but it’s okay because you’re not going to panic. No, you are going to write as you never thought you could.

You are going to sit down and write whatever comes into your head. You are going to write so fast that you don’t even know what it is you’re writing until you look back at it, and you’re not going to do that until the month is over.

If you must panic then panic onto paper. Give your characters a crisis and let them lose their heads. Whatever you do, don’t curl up in your closet with your pillow and a box of tissues; or if you have to then take your computer with you.

This week is your final push, whatever your word count is right now, I know you can keep on because you’re here. You’ve stuck with it and you can keep on with it.

You and I will write until our fingers cramp this week. We are going to give it our best. Yesterday I said that you had already won because of what you had learned and created. This week isn’t about winning, it’s about creating. You have so much left to write, so much more to tell, to discover.

Write with me. Write with all the experience you have gained this month behind you. Write to do what you began to do. Write to tell a story. Write to show yourself what you can do.

You set out to write 50,000 words of the story inside you, don’t stop now.

You are going to make it.

~Rita