This last weekend, I managed to make up some lost ground. I wrote around 7000 words in two days, which is decent when you’re about 14,000 words behind.
But I still ended the weekend behind, and I’ve slipped ever further behind this week.
There really isn’t much I can do about it. This is the busiest time of the year in the power industry. Monday, I worked a bit late, and had band practice. Tuesday, I worked a bit late, and took the night off. Wednesday, I worked really late, and was too exhausted to even write a blog post.
Tonight, I’m going to a write-in at Richard‘s house. If I can produce at least 2000 words tonight, and 2000 words tomorrow, I’ll be in a great position for another strong weekend. In order to feel confident about succeeding this month, I’ll need to do better than I did last weekend. With the Night of Writing Dangerously taking place Sunday, I don’t know if that will be possible.
There are side effects to missing goals, and falling this far behind. Self-doubt creeps in. As I was getting ready for work this morning, I let some of the despair take over for a little while. I thought, “Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that I’m a writer.”
Then I stood up straight, took a deep breath, and let that thought go.
I might not write 50,000 words this month, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. It just means I’ve had a really busy month, and I’ve been doing the responsible thing, which is to work and support my family. There’s no reason to feel bad about that.
The truth is that the story I’ve started this month might be amazing, someday. It’s not right now. It’s clumsy and misshapen, as many first drafts are. But there is some really good stuff in it. Whatever happens with NaNoWriMo, I’ve got something. In spite of all of the craziness and business that is my life right now, I’ve still managed to start something beautiful.
And that’s what it means to be a writer.
That’s a good attitude 🙂
I actually almost didn’t even start NaNo, because I thought I would never be able to do it and… well, I usually don’t try to do something I *know* I will fail at. I knew it would make me feel like crap, possibly even preventing me from writing. Writing 500 words a day was a big accomplishment, so 1667? Yeah… no. Martin told me that I might not want to try because I was scared of failing, but not even starting was also failing. It was conceding defeat from the start.
What really changed my mind was this though : http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2011/12/nanowrimo-epilogue/
It made me realize that you know, Failing (with a capital F, hmhm) wouldn’t be the end of the world. Here you have this published author who sold a lot of books and is pretty popular. And he failed at NaNo. It’s not making him less of a writer and it’s not making him a failure at life. It happens. We all have different paces and things going on in our life. NaNo is a nice challenge and accomplishing it would be pretty sweet but even if we don’t complete the challenge, those words that got written, be it 35 000 or a 100, they wouldn’t exist without it. Without us sitting and trying. And that itself is worth it. Those seeds of great things to be, they won’t germinate if we leave them in our pockets, we need to get our hands dirty and pour in lots of love and patience and sweat and with time they will grow into something magnificent.
Thanks for sharing that! I visit Pathrick Rothfuss’s blog from time to time, but I hadn’t read that post. It sums it up well!
And I really like what you said:
“Those seeds of great things to be, they won’t germinate if we leave them in our pockets, we need to get our hands dirty and pour in lots of love and patience and sweat and with time they will grow into something magnificent.”
Well said, and beautifully worded.