I seem to be the antithesis of NaNoWriMo. During the month of November this year I contributed fewer than 500 words to the future of Jeep Thompson, heroine of my next (unless some bizarre inspiration strikes and I write something completely different from my in-progress) novel, working title Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus.
Meanwhile, with an hour left before the clock strikes December, NaNoWriMo.org — official chronicler of National Novel Writing Month — is recording about 368,000 completed novels by the more than 798,000 writers who pledged to write a 50,000-word novel over the past 30 days.
My hearty congratulations to you all, who proved to yourself that generating 1,666 words a day is far from impossible.
Putting one sentence after another after another until you’ve completed telling a complex story is a challenging endeavor, which is why only half of the folks who try manage to reach the finish line. Completing any challenge is worth a celebration.
A hat tip to the other half, however, for setting a goal and going after it. Most people, I dare say, do not set goals, or if they do they’re along the lines of “I want to write a novel someday,” not “I want to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days,” which is a defined, measurable goal. The people who did not complete their task by the end of Nov. 30 don’t have the luxury of saying, “Well, it’s not someday yet,” but I bet they wrote more of a novel than the someday dreamers.
My consolation prize is that I wrote 30 more blog posts this month and haven’t missed a day since the day before Aug. 1, 2020. It’s not as good as having Jeep solve her Venusian problems, but December is another month — and it’s got one more day, so I only need to hit 1,613 words a day.
