Day Five of National Novel Writing Month.
After a quick start for Days One and Two, Real Life reared an ugly head and put a temporary kabosh on my NaNoWriMo goals.
All you fledgling writers out there participating in this month’s NaNo knows that you must write approximately 1700 words per day in order to get to 50K by the end of the month. Well, sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. It will especially NOT happen if your full time work is NOT writing, or if you’re NOT retired or NOT a lifetime recipient of the MegaMillions jackpot.
In that case, do what I did today: make up for those two days of unproductive looking at your laptop with longing by a marathon writing session when you can afford to do so.
I’ve written 8K words in a day of NaNoWriMo, so I know it can be done. As long as you persevere, you can forgive yourself a day off (or two).
However, despite the reasons why-good, bad, or lame-if you fall off the wagon temporarily, get back up and get on! If you fall off the wagon permanently, forgive yourself and vow to get back on sometime in the future.
Remember, the whole point is to incorporate writing into your daily life. Sure you want to sketch out a novel, and some succeed in doing so. But the competition is not with the thousands of people out there, the competition resides within. And since you are competing against (or for) yourself, you owe it to yourself to be kind.
Keep writing.
