No one else will write it for you
Barely minutes ago I crossed 50,000 words, the bar set to ‘win’ National Novel Writing Month. Funny how my instinct is then to immediately write yet more words huh? But these are important words.
The reason I put the word win in inverted commas above is because winning is relative. Any words you write during NaNo are more words than you would have written otherwise. One of the quotes I have stuck around my monitor to motivate me during the challenge is:
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy. And that hard” — Neil Gaiman
One of the other quotes is the title of this piece. And it’s a very important message.
Nobody else will write it for you, because nobody else can. You have stories within you. Only by persevering through the graft of trapping them in words — sometimes a slog, sometimes a joy — will you share that story with the world. And it is a story that deserves to be shared.
November’s been a hell of a month for me. Working almost full time, particularly within the run up to Christmas, has been a drain on time that I’d have preferred to have used writing. I novelled on my breaks. Occasionally I novelled in the quietest parts of long shifts (Ssh, don’t tell anyone!). My motorcycle got a puncture in the first couple of days of the month. So I stayed home and I wrote, taking it as a sign. More often than I should I wrote until the early hours of the morning. I’ve battled with procrastination every minute, distracted constantly. Consumed much caffeine and sugar. All in the name of a crazy goal, one so distant and so achievable all at the same time.
Some days I wrote thousands of words. Some days I wrote barely any, or even none at all. As I got closer to the magic 50k, each word seemed to get harder and harder. I’d already written my beginning, and my end, now I had to resign myself to write the bit in the middle — not quite as exciting. But certainly necessary for my story. I persevered, and finally broke target today.
I’m dragging on here, still in the mode of frenetically scribbling. My message is simple, doesn’t need to be wrapped in so many words. Duly, it follows.
Only you can tell your story. Yes, it’s hard. If you managed to write those 50,000 words in a month like I did — congratulations, you did something…pretty insane! Even if you didn’t, irrelevant of how close you came — you still won.
Any words are winning words, because any words are more than no words.
Commit to your story, let it free. How long it takes doesn’t matter in the end.
