To the Novelists of NaNoWriMo, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves Shoe String, a Lavender Garland, and Twelve Strong Women.

I am sad today, and a little disappointed at Sufjan Stevens, who told Paste magazine recently that his heroic endeavor to compose and record one album for each of our fifty states in America was "such a joke."

Sure, it was an insanely, overwhelmingly, awe-inspiring behemoth of a goal, especially considering the elaborate results of the two albums of the cycle he managed to put out. But if there weren't people like Sufjan dreaming up the Seventh Wonders of creativity, we the "little guys" would never have the guts to embrace dreams as diminutive as a novel.

"... Maybe I took it too seriously," he said. Well of course you did, you idjit! It's a freakin' HUGE endeavor! Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State and Illinoise (which are both sheer genius) would never have happened without that kind of singularity that requires you to not treat them as some fly-by-night larks! If I don't take Son of a Saint seriously, it's never going to get done. Which is to say, if I stop and think about it long enough, I might realize what a joke my work is.

(Which is not to say I can't have a fun time with it along the way. And I have.)

"I started to feel like I was becoming a cliché of myself,” he said. I worry about the same thing. And that's what keeps me going. Because if I abandon this now, if I don't get this thing to a state where I'd actually let someone else's eyes read it, then I'm back to my old cliché self.