It’s Good to Have Goals

Last week, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. For those of you not in the know, NaNoWriMo is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. Throughout the month of November, aspiring writers all over the nation participate in the NaNoWriMo contest with the goal of writing 50,000 words by the end of the month. The contest focuses on quantity, not quality. If you meet the word count goal, you win.

Does the contest sound like a recipe for disaster? Perhaps it is, and maybe it was designed to be that way. Writing for the sake of writing and meeting a word count goal likely generates a lot of cruft. I imagine most (if not all) of the participants will produce reams of filler, but in the fluff, kernels of the storyline and glimpses of good writing will shine. At least that is the hope!

Everything I read says that writing well takes practice and discipline. Sitting around and dreaming about being a writer someday does not get you anywhere. Thinking you’ll write when x, y, or z is settled delays ever starting.

I am a prime example of a person who dreamed of writing and let everything else get in the way. My time-consuming job happened to be my largest obstacle and my biggest excuse. I did not have to take a career break to write, but I did, and now I have no excuses. Every time I think about being lazy, I remind myself that I shouldn’t squander the opportunity to write. Whether I bang out a quick blog post or spend a couple of hours writing down my thoughts or ideas, I need to write daily and make my writing practice as natural as breathing.

Signing up for the contest forces me to rise to the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month. The contest encourages the discipline of a consistent writing habit (daily, weekdays, evenings, weekends, whatever works). Anyone can write, but not everyone wants to find the time to write. I know people who have participated in NaNoWriMo and won year after year while working a full-time job and raising a family. This is doable. Nothing stands in my way of succeeding except me.

I harbor no illusions about the quality of the work I’ll produce for the contest. Though I will aim for a coherent story, proper sentence structure, and interesting characters, I know this will be a very rough first draft at best. There will be days when I’ll be phoning it in and days when I’m on fire. At this point, I cannot predict which will be more prolific, but I can guarantee that the word count will be prolific. After all, the word count is the goal, and I like goals.

To encourage success, I have mapped out my writing days for November and figured out the word count goal for each day. With friends and family visiting during and after Thanksgiving, I have blocked off those days as non-writing days, so technically I will be finishing by November 25th. On the eve of Thanksgiving, I hope to submit my encrypted manuscript and kick back with a glass (or bottle) of wine.