Maybe This Time

[NaNoWriMo 2010: Day Three]

I haven't been completely open about my NaNo motivations for this year. You see, they're a bit tawdry. I'm not doing NaNo for the pure, starry-eyed exhilaration of writing a novel in a month. I'm doing it for the Golden Heart.

For those of you who aren't members of the Romance Writers of America, the Golden Heart is a contest - the contest, really - for unpublished writers. Details can be found here, but suffice it to say I want to enter the GH. Madly. For the last three years, Stephanie and I have attended RWA Nationals and stared with poorly disguised envy at the lovely little ribbons adorning the GH finalists' nametags. We've watched as talented writer after talented writer has received that little pendant and thanked their husbands and agents and well-behaved dogs.

Sitting in the audience of the awards ceremony feels like five year-old me watching UT basketball games all over again. I used to look at the cheerleaders on the sidelines, gorgeous and acrobatic, with a mixture of awe and anticipation. Someday, I would think with absolute certainty, I'm going to be just like them! After a few years of teenage cheerleading, that dream fizzled (about the same time I realized I was 5'8'', not 5'2'' and had more fun cheering for myself than boys), but that yearning still feels remarkably fresh when I think back on it. My yearning for a GH nomination is 50 times as strong. It's never going to go away if I don't learn how to backflip enter the damn contest!

So, I'll come right out and say it: I want to win a Golden Heart. I almost want it as much as I want to get published. I'm not doing NaNo for NaNo, I'm doing it because I've almost run out of time to get my GH entries polished. NaNo just happens to have very good timing.

In light of all this truthiness, tonight's song is another one of my personal themes. A perfectly fervent, angsty song to express this pie-in-the-sky hope. And - surprise, surprise - it's from another Broadway show! This is going to be a pattern, obviously.





[I've provided both the wonderful, original Liza Minelli version, as well as the great cover by Kristen Chenoweth and Lia Michele. Full disclosure, though? In my mind, my dear, devestatingly talented friend Rachael is always the one singing this. Too many Broadway belting car rides, perhaps?]