Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A pep talk...


Oh, NaNoWriMo.  Whether you participate in November, June, or August, there is a special kind of guilt that participants fall prey to as they write.

You know what I'm talking about.  In order to write 50,000 words in one month, you should aim to write 1,667 words per day.  A large, but not unachievable, word count.  But sometimes, you hit 800 or 1,000 or 1,200 words, and you just can't write any more.  You're stuck, you have no more words in you for that day, and you're tired.  Ordinarily, your total for the day would be a word count worthy of celebration, but because you fell short of the magic 1,667 words, you feel like a failure.

Well, stop it.

Stop feeling guilty if you don't hit 1,667 words in a day.  Ask yourself this: did I write today?  If the answer is 'yes' then you have succeeded.  Any day you get a non-zero number of words down is a good day, and you shouldn't beat yourself up for not reaching some arbitrary goal.

That being said, it's important to push yourself, to stretch your writing muscles and try to power through the dry spells.  But understand that not every day is going to be a banner writing day, and don't wallow in guilt when that happens.  After all, this is supposed to be fun, right?

Right?

4 comments:

  1. Love the poster [vbg]
    And it's true - I've just got to stop measuring my progress against others!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good post. I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, but I feel happy if I write any words at all in a day. I didn't for almost 3 years. Now my goal is 500. If I exceed that I feel good.

    ReplyDelete

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