Done.

All month long, I’ve been keeping a calendar. Each day, I mark the number of words written and the running total. I color it green if I’ve exceeded the daily goal (1,667 words) and pink if I have not. I get a gold star whenever I have a green day.

I look at that calendar now and see the results: 56,204 words reached on Day 30. I look back to Day 1 and see 965. It’s kind of incredible to imagine what ideas, whimsy, surprises spun out in the 55,239 words in between. And that is the part of the process that is most satisfying to me: the surprises. I think I’m writing a little scene about two friends on a walk and it turns into a meditation on women’s fashion, a character goes into a bagel store and encounters a first-generation man of vague middle-eastern descent who has ambitions to higher things, a business meeting ends with a fire alarm, characters force their way onto the page from where I do not know. Who is Senora, why is her name misspelled, is she some sort of astronomy buff to have named her twins Deneb and Altair? None of these things existed at word 965, they weren’t even in my imagination. But now they are on the page.

So I feel gratitude for the creative endeavor, quiet pride at having spun a yarn out the full distance yet again, and curiousity to return to my work in a few month’s time to find what my psyche has shared, unbeknownst to me.

Thanks reader(s) for following my 30 days of writing adventure. I feel seen and that matters to me a great deal.

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