You are pumped. You are prepared. You are a little daunted. But you think it's doable. Twenty thousand words in week is doable. You sit down, stare at your screen and mentally scream, go! This lasts about an hour before everything goes to hell.
STAGE TWO: avoidance
The internet has all of a sudden sprouted all of these lovely gifts. Twitter! AIM! Yahoo! Blog posts! Deviantart! Everything and anything except Microsoft Word, which is really what you're supposed to be focused on. This can last anywhere from an hour, to the entirety of your madness.
STAGE THREE: confidence
You're in about three thousand words and stuff is happening. Real stuff. Shit's hitting the fan left and right. You can do this. You might actually finish on time.
STAGE FOUR: panic
Everything that you're writing is garbage. Why would anyone want to read this crap? IT MAKES NO SENSE. Your career as a writer? ITS OVER. And it never even started. You stare at the screen, torn between sobbing and just getting to the part where you can write 'THE END'.
STAGE FIVE: relief
YOU FINISHED. The end has been typed. It might be crap. It might be swill. BUT ITS DONE. This is the part where you proceed to get up, dance like a mad person, and scream it to the world (or Twitter). You email the completed version to yourself, close Microsoft Word, and force yourself not to think about how, once your betas get a hand on it, you're going to be doing this all over again.
EDIT: Because I am still giddy and high (and chanting 'I'm done!' over and over again in my head) I spent a very long time making this! Click on it to make it bigger.
