Off to the Races

The word of the day is GO! Today kicks off our first full day of NaNoWriMo! One month, one goal of 50,000 words, all of us striving forward together. You can do this! First step: go to the website and put in your information and join your regional group! Why? Because motivation that’s why!

No really, did you know that putting in your information like your book’s title and synopsis, is highly motivational. It reinforces the notion that you will be making this thing come true. It’s not just a pipe dream, your story is going to become a reality this month.

Last week I mentioned that there is no secret to achieving that 50,000 word goal at the end of the month. Well, there sort-of kind-of is a secret but first a story. I was once like you. I had never written very much since college and even then, my term papers and scripts were far short of 50,000 words. It is a daunting number. One that seems impossible. I never even imagined that one day I would try to write a book. I never even thought I could write a book until the day I did. 

I never even thought I could write a book until the day I did. 

Sometimes when we look at the scale of a thing it can be overwhelming. It can seem like we are reaching far beyond our limits. For my very first story I told myself the same mantra every night; “Just tell the story, let the word count fall where ever the story ends.” Each night for a month in August of 2008 I stayed late after work with the intent of writing for just one hour. No word counts. No motivational blog posts. Just me, alone, in my office. Some nights, writing was a slog, other nights I had to force myself to go home after the clock struck midnight. I plucked away at it, every weeknight for a month. There late at night in my office in Georgia, my very first story was born.

This is the secret to getting your writing done. Set aside a block of time and keep it no matter what. Write for just one hour. A single episode of TV. One hour a day. Every day. If we break down our goals into bite-sized pieces we find that they are not impossible. The mountains we once feared are not unconquerable. That first story that I completed came in at 52,000 words, I had passed my word count, but I was elated for a very different reason. There, in my hands for the very first time, was a complete story from start to finish. I danced and wept, not because of some word count or some challenge, I was overjoyed because of two little words: The End. I had done the impossible. I had written down one of my stories and a new dream was born.

There’s more writer in you than you know. Believe in yourself. Put your butt in the chair. Write. Every single day put your thoughts on the page. Every single word counts. Every single sentence a battle won. Every paragraph another brick laid. Bit by bit, we toil and we strive, and we write, and we write, and we write until the story is told. That is the secret to getting to 50,000 words in November. You can do this, you just need to take it one day at a time.