"So how's it going?"

"I think I finished."

"Eee! No way! Congratulations!"

"Thank you! I have... 50,644 words."

"You know, this reminds me of that fourth of July song. Only it's not January."

"Umm... do I know this song?"

"Yeah. It's about the fourth of July."

"Ah."

"I thought about getting champagne," Adrienne explained, comfortably ensconced in one corner of the giant blue couch. "But I turned left instead of right on my way home from work."

"I hate champagne," Starhawk announced. "I've had to drink too much of it lately."

"Beer is pretty much the same thing anyway," Adrienne agreed, in the way that she wasn't so much responding to anything that had been said as they were both agreeing to let their separate conversations continue uninterrupted.

"Whee!" Starhawk slid across the polished hardwood floor in her fleece socks, the room-length glide abetted by a running start. "'If you're too young for champagne, you can pick up a champagne substitute--'"

"Such as beer," Adrienne finished, amused. Chris Baty had a quote for all NaNoWriMo-related occasions. And a few unrelated ones, too. "It's just as hard to distribute to my support staff, though. Most of them are too young and too far away."

"My support staff is my characters," Starhawk remarked, getting ready for another run. "They don't drink."

"None of your characters drink?" Adrienne repeated skeptically.

"Well, I don't actually know... whee!" Starhawk's reply was interrupted by her slide into the kitchen. From the other side of the counter she called, "It hasn't come up; they've only been in school for a day."

Adrienne pondered her beer while Starhawk raced out of the kitchen, one foot in front of the other as she skidded across the living room floor. "So, in 50,600 words, my characters have gone through an entire semester and yours have gone through a day?"

Starhawk tripped over the edge of the rug and collapsed onto the couch beside her. "Basically, yeah."

They sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the sound of "Today's Country" over the TiVo. "Does this seem anti-climactic to you?" Starhawk asked at last.

Adrienne suppressed a snicker. The end of National Novel Writing Month, anti-climactic? The end of coke, excess vitamin C, dead squirrels, sore wrists, and lost sleep? They both looked at each other and grinned.

"Nah," they said simultaneously.

"So are you ready for next year?"

"Uh..."

"Let me rephrase that. Overall, are you left with a positive feeling about the experience?"

"Yes. What about you?"

"Yes. I think by next November I'll be ready to do it again."

"I was thinking maybe by January."

"I think maybe by January I'll be ready to write again, period."

"Mmm-hmm."