Fun fact: I did not remember that A Time to Kill was a movie until I wrote the title for this post.
Was not a pun, is not a pun: I have just come to terms with the fact . . . that I really need to relax.
Week 3 was fine. In fact, Week 3 was wildly productive–I have been averaging 2000-3000 words a day for the past few days, and my protagonists are halfway through the second act of their adventure.
However . . . I have come to some super important realizations in the past few days.
Thing the First: I Am Not Going to Win
Camp NaNoWriMo 2021
I know that sounds terrible, but I am in no way saying that I’m giving up on Memory.
Seriously, I’m going to finish the novel–in part because my process works so well for me that I now find it harder not to write for the day? It’s a weird feeling, but I just naturally think of how I’ll start the next scene and then–with the same energy I used to have when opening Twitter–I just pop open my MS like, “Man, I wonder what Memory and Kole are up to?”
That said . . . I am definitely not reaching 50,000 words by the end of the month.
It’s absolutely because of those days off I took earlier in the month. Lesson learned: if I didn’t take days off and just stuck to the 1,666 daily word goal, I definitely could’ve hit 50,000. But, I did take those days off on the first two weeks, and the result was a quota that kept getting steeper and steeper.
Until today, the first day where I needed to write at least 3000 words. Which would be followed by six additional days, in a row, where I also needed to write 3000.
And, full disclosure: I tried to hit that 3000. That’s why I’m posting so late.
But I ultimately realized . . .
Thing the Second: I Don’t . . .
. . . Need to Win NaNoWriMo?
I’m laughing as I write this because, when I wrote the first version of Memory, this same thing happened.
I took days off, fell behind, “lost” NaNoWriMo 2014, and then finished the book anyway a week later.
But here we are, seven years later, and it’s going to happen again.
The important part being: yeah, just like last time, you bet your ass I’m finishing Memory regardless.
It’s just going to take an extra week or so.
And.
That’s.
Fine.
If it’s happened twice now that I just needed days off and taking them didn’t stop me from finishing a WIP, then I guess the occasional day off is just part of my process now. The same way belting out a novel in (roughly) a month after outlining it for (roughly) a year is my process, so are the days when I wake up, look at the ceiling, and just say, “No.”
I don’t know why it took me so long to accept this. I guess I got caught up in the gaminess of National Novel Writing Month. But I just don’t need to satisfy the win condition of Camp NaNoWriMo 2021. Especially because I knew from the start that Memory was going to run longer than 50,000, as I said in Week 1 post. I guess I just wanted to be able to say that I won?
But I think being able to say, “I tried to win NaNoWriMo twice with the same story and I failed both times the same exact way,” is significantly funnier and more on brand for me. It’s a story and I like those.
And also, I like being able to breathe. This whole air-in-out thing is oddly comforting.
~~~
That said, yes, I’m going to keep these posts running until I finish Memory, because I’m staying honest about it.
If you’d like to find out if it’ll take me one or two extra weeks to finish this WIP, you can give me a Follow via the button on the left sidebar on PC or the upper right drop down menu on mobile. Likes are also always appreciated as a way to gauge what posts you guys enjoy and what content I should focus on.
Until next time, stay safe, stay hydrated, and if you’re struggling to do something in a way you think it needs to be done, accept that maybe it’s okay to do it the way you want to.
House of Error 