The Countdown Begins

     NaNoWriMo is less than a week away and though there is nothing but my pride at stake I must admit I am a little nervous.  As a writer I would say the one little creature of fear that is always scuttling around in the darkness and gnawing at the edges of my being is the fear of failure.  As a writer you have to take chances.  You sit down in front of a computer or with a notebook on your lap and you begin to create.  For a little while you keep that creation all to yourself and this is safe.  It is safe because as long as nobody knows what you're writing or even if you're writing then there are no expectations. 
     Once you announce that you are working on something all of a sudden people begin to have expectations.  They ask you questions like 'How's the writing going?' or 'Can I read some of what you wrote?'.  The problem is that you can only hold them off for so long before they begin to realize that things are not going well.  That is my fear.  I have never in all of my life written 175 pages on one project.  The closest that I came was a novel I was writing for an independent study class in college and that was in the neighborhood of 125 to 130 pages.  And that was hard.  It was a struggle.  each week I had to face my professor with a new chapter for her to read and for her to give back the previous week's assignment with her notes.
     So that, in a nutshell, is why I am a bit nervous about November the 1st.  If I were simply writing something on my own there would be little or no pressure.  After announcing my intention to participate in NaNoWriMo, however, I now feel that all eyes are on me.  There will be success or there will be failure.  I'm hoping for the former.