If you’ve taken on the task of writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, the days zip along a little quicker than that. Odds are you’ve added something different to your routine, by regularly planting your heinie in the chair to get your word requirements done daily or at least semi-daily. Some of you have given up quite a bit of your daily routine to get your writing done, and I commend any effort made to prioritize your writing.
Whether you’ve reached your 25,000 words yet or not, that in itself makes you a winner. You’ve realized that writing a book is a difficult task but not an impossible one. With one word at a time, you’ve made admirable progress towards a completed goal. No matter how many words you've written, you're a few steps further than you were before when it came to finishing your book. Every great journey is filled with a bunch of tiny steps. Sometimes just a little extra effort can turn into big, big things.
No matter where you are in the process, you still have the same two weeks as everyone else to put this beast to bed. Hopefully by now you’ve taught yourself that you are capable of doing that, simply by getting into that ugly, messy first draft and getting your hands a little dirty. Hopefully by now you’ve discovered that two weeks is a lot of writing time that can get you even further along the track.
Whether you finish or not, that’s the objective. Start writing. Keep writing. Finish a project.
I, for one, believe you totally have it within you to do that. Whether you do it in 30 days or not is not really the question. You were given a month simply because it’s a definite period of time. You have a beginning. You have an end. You have thirty whole days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes… 2,592,000 seconds. That’s a whole lot of time to write 50,000 teeny, tiny words.
Hopefully by now you’ve realized that it’s not how much time you’re given, but how you use it.
Learn that little trick, and you’ll never be intimidated by another deadline ever again.
Pressured, yes. Stressed out by, sure. But scared?
Never again.
You build confidence by doing, and that’s what you’ve been doing every single time you wrote even one little word that wasn’t there before. Whether you have 25,000 words or 250, you’re still a step further than a lot of people who merely wish they could write a book. Maybe that even included you fifteen days ago.
Wishes are for dreamers. You’re a doer. You’re an ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners, Nanowrimo superstar. I don’t care where you are or how many words you’ve done. If you’ve started, you’re one of us now. Own that. Hold your head up high.
Imagine how much better that is going to feel when you cross the finish line.
Like I said, you have two weeks left, and a lot can happen in two weeks.
As for me, I’ll be turning my attention more towards the craft of not only finishing/enhancing your first draft, but tips how to edit future drafts. We have a whole lot of work ahead of us, and I’m going to assume by now that if you’ve made it to the halfway point, you’re in it for the long haul. We’ve already covered most excuses that people typically use to give up. If any of that even remotely applied to you, you’d have told me to get stuffed by the first week and gone back to your regular day-to-day, spared the chaos and stress of doing the impossible: writing a 50,000-word book in a month.
For everyone else, you’re still here for a reason. You suspect that it’s not impossible at all to complete 50,000 words. Other people have done it. You think maybe you’d like to do it, too. Down deep inside you still want to cross that finish line. And deep inside, you suspect you have what it takes to do just that.
You're right.
I can show you how to get there. You’ll still have to do the hard work yourself, but again… I totally think you can do it.
And you should believe it, too. The first step towards accomplishing anything in life is the belief that you can. Otherwise it would be pointless to try. You’d bail at the very first failure, and that’s not how you get anything done. Besides, it’s not you anyway. If you wanted to quit, you’d have taken those same excuses that derail everyone else, the ones I handed you day after day in the beginning. The fact that you’re still here, eager or willing to learn how to bust through the blocks and barriers, means giving up isn’t an option for you.
The good news is that’s exactly what kind of moxie it takes to finish a book, whether you do it in a month or not.
In case I’m being too subtle, “not going to finish in time,” is yet another excuse to quit. I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that is not acceptable.
You may have started Nano to “win” it, which is to say you wanted to write a 50,000-word book (or 50,000 words towards a longer book) in a month, but your objective is much bigger than winning some bragging rights. The point of Nano is to turn “I wish” into “I did.” What you’ll learn in this process is invaluable. Whether you write 50,000 words or 500, you will learn how to take what is in your head and put it on the page, no matter what it turns into in the process. Sometimes that’s a mess, and you’ll learn to be okay with that. I’d much rather see you attempt and fail than fear trying at all. Only one will get you to the finish line no matter how you define it.
If you’ve fallen behind, this is your challenge to get right back in the thick of it. It’s not about completing 50,000 in 15 days anymore. It’s about staying in the game and wringing everything out of the experience you can, no matter where you end up on November 30. Aim for your own bulls’ eye. Maybe you can’t complete 50,000 anymore, but you can complete 25,000. You can complete 10,000. You can get further than where you are now, and that’s sort of the point.
So keep going.
For those of you who are right on schedule, kudos. You’ve resisted every excuse and made writing your priority, getting in your word counts even when circumstances were stacked against you to do that very thing. Life doesn’t skip over you during the month of November simply because you’ve undertaken this challenge. It doesn’t show up on your doorstep, carrying calamity and discord, and then say, “Oops, sorry. I didn’t see you were doing Nano. My bad. I’ll come back later.” You’ve added Nano to your life, and if you’ve managed to keep on track that’s a major accomplishment. You’re on track to be one of a very small percentage of “winners.” Yay, you!
Now keep going.
If you’ve already “won,” by writing your 50,000 words already just to get ahead of the game, congratulations. You’ve taken what others have said is impossible and made it look easy, even when it wasn’t. You’ve proven you are a Nano Ninja Warrior, and I have to say I like your style. You have determination and drive, and you know how to channel that into action. Writers like you challenge me to up my own game. “Deadlines? I don’t need no stinking deadlines!” No excuses, no limitations. You’ve got what it takes to go very far indeed.
So keep going.
The next part of the book will give you the tools you need to start turning that lump of clay into a masterpiece. We’ll even get into marketing and publishing a little later on. There’s a lot of ground yet to cover to get you ever closer to that next step in your journey.
In the meantime, take a moment to revel in the accomplishment, because it’s pretty huge. I’m proud of how far you’ve come, no matter how far that is. Tomorrow we get back into the nuts and bolts of writing.
Today we celebrate how far we’ve come, no matter how far that is, and we regroup for what comes next.
It ain’t over. It's only beginning.
Started First Draft: November 15, 2015 8:00am PST
Completed First draft: November 15, 2015 8:52am PST
Word Count of first draft: 1,372
Completed revisions: November 15, 2015 9:40am PST
Updated WC: 1,516/54,868
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