The removal of the pressure of having to write every single day is the first thing you notice. You kind of sit in a mental fugue where your mind feels like it is supposed to be somewhere else but isn't and is confused by it. You notice that people you were in contact with nearly every day seem to kind of fade away, not disappear completely but mostly. You don't get those 'You can do it!' emails that get you through the next 1667 words and beyond. You begin to feel bereft.
For me there is the added loss of write-ins. While only a few meetings had a half dozen attendees, it is kind of nice to sit down and write with like minded people. A common goal that links you to another human being. And you get a good dose of laughter and conversation with it. It's a good feeling. I'll miss those.
Overall, it is the sense of community that pulls one along during the month and it is this sense of community I find myself missing the most every year. Visiting the forums on the last day is very sad in some ways. You really probably won't be back until next year. But things happen and you might not be able to come back. Or something may happen to some of them and they won't be back. You think about it all that last day. And for the month of December, you feel it.
There is the sense of success in the knowledge that I've written 50,000 words of a novel. But there is an impending sense that if I don't do something with it I'll lose something else.
I don't know what the magic of NaNoWriMo really is. I don't what pulls us back to it every year. All I know is that for me, it is a place that comes around only once a year where I can do things I might not have done otherwise. I can go places in my mind that are only limited by my imagination. I can meet people I might never have met. I can laugh more than I have ever laughed.
Then, in 30 days, its gone.
