I went into this year’s NaNoWriMo for a few reasons, the biggest of them being that I thought it would be a good way to challenge myself to write already, sans editing myself into oblivion as I often do when faced with a blank page. And it was great when I hit day four and found a bit of a groove to work in after struggling at each writing session to just get through every sentence.
Despite finding inspiration in the past few days for making this collection of words a bit more novel-like, I haven’t added anything to it since last weekend. I don’t like admitting this, but I habitually scrap my work to begin again when it doesn’t start out and remain “perfect”: in this case, that I didn’t have a solid idea going into the project, that I didn’t hit my daily writing targets to help keep the project “sane” so that I could avoid a mad rush to finish at the end of the month, and that I haven’t written in a week. My thinking gets a little too black-or-white, all-or-nothing, leaving my projects in a continual state of being chucked and re-started with little resolution, or abandoned for good and left for the dustbin.
This “be perfect” expectation is unrealistic and leaves little room for real life, so my goal this month it to set that aside, write my ass off, and just see how it goes. I know I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and that I may not meet the word count target by November 30, but I’m not throwing in the towel on this one.
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