So, I got to 51k last night. I posted my milestone on one of several NaNo Facebook pages. Part of me felt like I was bragging, but I did it anyway. I got a few thumbs up but one person was shocked and seemed like they took it very personally. I felt bad.
I didn't want to be bragging. I wanted to share my first hurdle. Honestly, I'm only a little more than 20% of the way to my own dream goal of 240k. But I know these NaNos are hard for this person. They've only been able to complete one out of several. So to them, I probably was bragging.
I deleted my post. I decided I didn't want to discourage anyone who was struggling. I don't want some people to think they're not doing well because of my insane goals and my obsessive desire to accomplish those goals.
I guess this is the realization that I've put myself into a different league. I'm with the serious Nanoers. Most people who do NaNo are there to see if they can do it. They want to say they've written a novel. They want to try and stretch their wings.
I'm beyond that. I already know I can stretch my wings and tromp that 50k goal, which is why I set higher goals for myself, why I've spent the last five months planning for November so when I got here, I'd be able to spend the majority of my time doing NaNo. All so I can reach my goals.
Maybe some others do that and they still struggle. I get that. 50k is hard. I remember how excited I was the first time I reached it. It was something like 2 in the morning and I hit it, barely. I sat there and cried as I stared at the congratulatory screen. My husband felt like he needed to wake up and come give me a hug. It was huge.
It still is huge. That's why I wanted to share it last night. I was excited about it. I'm doing really well this NaNo. I'm still poised to hit 150k and a little more.
I still have a long way to go. I'd like to get to 240k, but I haven't figured out the discipline to hit those daily word counts. It might take me a couple more NaNos before I get that under my belt. As I wandered around the NaNo forums late last night, searching for something to soothe my guilt, I saw a post that really made sense. It was on a thread called 'You know you're an overachiever when...." One of the answers I saw was '...you set your goal for a quarter mill because you already do 50k every month of the year and if you didn't set your bar higher for November, then what's the point?'
That's the whole gist of it right there. If we're not challenging ourselves every month, week, day, then what's the point?
I want this. I want to publish books. I love writing (not so much editing). But I love it so much, one 30 day stretch of pure creativity is enough to get me through the next three months until there's another NaNo. I can almost taste how much I want to do this. I can't even sleep to get away from these books because I dream about them. And I love it.
Anyone can do this, believe it or not. Anyone. How bad do you want it?
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