Let us pause for a moment while I attempt the never before successfully completed quadruple piroutte backflip mambo jazzbox happy dance capped off with a booty shake and can I get a "Woo hoo!"

Sara is accomplishing via NaNoWriMo the high level self-awareness countless people try and fail to achieve through meditation and similar centering practices. The structure of the writing task, with the prescribed number of words, is making her show up to the page every day, whether she knows what she is going to write or not. She commited to the process and she's doing it without expectation. Failure to keep the commitment, along with the open-mindedness and freedom from expectation that Sara demonstrates, is why so many people abandon what could be extraordinarily beneficial centering practices. The path to self-knowledge is surprisingly easy to travel when you engage in it in the egoless way that Sara is approaching NaNoWriMo.

Now, one weekend of insight does not enlightenment make (typically), and Sara understands that. She goes on to write:

Stepping out of Jane Goodall mode now, what's amazing is that I thought of this as I was thinking about my writing. When people talk about writing a novel they talk about technique and structure and creativity exercise but they're really talking about writing a GOOD book. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to write a book and all that requires is typing keys on a keyboard until I choose to type THE END. That's all. If I someday decide to transform my book into a good book I can do that by editing, but if I tried to write a good book to start with I would never start, let alone finish.

And I started to see how much that mirrored my life. I'm so obsessed with creating the perfect life that I never get started creating a life for myself at all. But just like writing a novel, creating a life isn't complicated: decide to do something and then do it. Everything else is editing. And it's silly to worry about editing when there' s no story to edit.

So... thus far my character hasn't gotten up the nerve to really start writing her life yet. She's very attached to her dictionary and MLA handbook and is worried about leaving them behind while she types at the keyboard. But at least she realizes now what she needs to do and that reading more books or drawing more plot diagrams would only be procrastinating.

Rock on, Sara. Can't wait to read the book. May your character never cease to surprise and entertain you!