Guess where I am. I’m down here where anything seems possible. Where the words flow—you hope—and the pages multiply—please—and you’re so deep into writing this novel you couldn’t stop if someone dragged you away by the hair, which would hurt, sure, but you’d lose a few hairs over it, it’s your novel.

It’s fun down here. Look at all the colors. The soundtrack is yours to select and I’ve got the same song on repeat and no one can stop me! Down here, it never rains unless you want it to and then you get drenched. We have sparklers. We have rainbows. We have ponies. We have all the time in the world (not really, but we pretend). You can be hella genius in your own mind down here because no one’s read what you’ve written yet. You can be the next Maureen Johnson or the next Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Or you can just be yourself, because down here that’s enough. Down here, you’re someone. You matter. You make perfect sense. Your run-on sentences are to-die-for, darling. Down here, you can say anything you want and go anywhere you want and no one’s going to yell at you to put on some shoes.

Down here, this novel is the best thing you’ve written ever. It is good. It is good. It is good. Keep telling yourself that, it works. Down here, you truly believe that just maybe it’s actually sorta good.

Go with it. The doubts and self-loathing and people calling you names and pelting you with tomatoes will come later.

Down here, everyone still loves you. The dozen red roses and the breakfast in bed and all the rest. Really, it’s so nice down here why would anyone ever want to leave?

So here I am, writing my first draft. I want to write to the end of the book by December so I can have fun line-editing and revising myself into oblivion. (A whole other level of existence I’m looking forward to reaching.)

I know some of you are down here with me. First drafts by the end of 2009. I have at least 40,000 words left to write. Who else?