This is my 200th Post! It took me a couple tries to decide what it is, exactly, that I want to use it for. A Retrospective? Eh, that’s what the archives are for, and anyway, I’m all-for not looking back when it comes to how much I’ve grown.

Photos of the cats? Sigh. Fine. But just one, and then we’ll get right down to the point. {There is a point, and for once, the point is not The Cats.}

Here’s what it all really comes down to. 200 posts later, I’m finally completely surrounded by people who want me to chase my writing dream. And not just the people who are obligated to be nice to me– like James, and my mother– but complete strangers, people who have no absolutely connection to me whatsoever beyond the insane ramblings of my Twitter stream.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am eternally grateful and forever shaped by the love and support my Family has shown me when it comes to writing. Writing this website, writing that website, writing my first novel. There were a great many people when I was younger who didn’t have the patience for my creativity and imagination. My mother was never, ever one of those people. There was always time for me to tell her another story. There was always room for her to ask, What then? … And then what happened? And my stories and my imagination soared, at her gentle and unconditional coaxing.

When I become a successful author, it will be at least 80% because my mother never let it occur to me that I would do anything else.

When I told her that I was going to do NaNoWriMo, she laughed a little. She’s been patiently waiting for two things from me for the better part of a decade. 1. Grandbabies. 2. A novel, dedicated to her, that will sell millions of copies.

She knows that she has ten years left before the grandbabies. The least I can do is knock out a book, right? My start-and-stop relationship with writing has been steadily growing into “You know what? I really do think I’ll love you forever.” But we all know, and my mother believed me when I told her, that this NaNoWriMo project is my official and final litmus test. If I don’t do it, if I don’t finish… I’m going back to school for Education, or furthering my degrees in Film Theory, and I’ll leave the story-telling to the adults who have the very specific skill-set that it requires to tell a good story completely. {Like, for example, an attention span.}

I haven’t been able to knock one out yet, but I’m determined. And she’s cheering me on, and that’s all I need.

Well, her and James. James, who is my hero in a way that I can’t really quite capture in language yet. The man who liberated me from my fears of commitment and from my awful job and from Manhattan, for better or for worse. The man who tolerates my compulsive shoe-buying, notebook-buying, mind-changing ways. The man who claims to love me despite the fact that his parents’ house makes all kinds of weird noises that require his checking-out in the middle of the night. That man, the man I’m going to marry. He’s my hero.

And he’s another supporter. He sort of has to be, I suppose. He figured out early on that Writing was something that I Just Did. He likes the way he can hear my voice telling the stories he reads. I like hearing him chuckle to himself, I like that my stories make people laugh. Sometimes. When I’m brave enough to let them be seen.

James and my mother, their approval is important to me, and their support is so heartily appreciated. But you know what? It’s sort of expected. They love me. They’re walking that fine line that comes with love, the one between Telling People Things That Make Them Happy and Telling People The Truth. Sometimes those things are the same. Most of the time, when it comes to creative talents, I think you’ll find some disparity. And where you find disparity like that, you also find family members who Lie To Keep The Peace.

That’s where my new NaNoWriMo friends come in. They don’t have to worry about me giving them the cold shoulder at Thanksgiving, or scowling at them over Christmas, or crying at The Birthdays because they didn’t like my story. They do it for The Craft, and for The Process and because, just like me, they have these stories rumbling around inside them, begging to be freed. Jennifer, who I know through my Wedding World Community, agreed to do NaNoWriMo after I asked her to. {And then begged her to.} Hollie, whose words of excited encouragement lead me to make the commitment, could quite possibly be my intellectual and creative and professional soulmate. Hollie is also the lovely lady who said the thing that I am going to repeat to myself when Writing Gets Hard. We were talking about how our professional trajectory had seen a lot of overwhelming success at very young ages, and how it was paradoxical and horribly disenchanting to find ourselves so young and so miserable and also so “successful.”

She had just detailed all the gloriously gory details of her journey into and then out of publishing, and wrapped it up with the best articulations of Creative Need:

“Long story short, I’m now back to my roots as a journalist and happy as a lark. I just need the novel.”

I just need the novel. BOOM. Right there, that sentence, everything else just clicked into place. All the doubts I’ve had, and the questions as to why I feel the need to barrel ahead with such an aggressive project, and there it was, plain and simple. She’s absolutely right. I have everything, everything I’ve ever dreamed of. … I just need the novel.

So my 200th post, which is atrociously longer than it should be, is a giant THANK YOU! to the people who have rallied together around me. Thank you for your love, and your words of encouragement, and your willingness to answer seemingly inane questions in the name of Character Development. Thank you for answering my phone calls, and e-mails…

And most of all, for listening to my stories.

-MM.