Hope everyone had a great Halloween, and your November is off to a good start. Especially if it’s a novelling November for you.
My target for the first three weeks of the month is 15,000 words per week, so as to have a lighter target the week of US Thanksgiving. I just squeaked over that last week, but last week was week one. Everyone knows week one is for amateurs. Anyone can do it. You’ve got all these great resources at your disposal: the excitement of a new story; the support of loved ones; the camaraderie with others doing the challenge; leftover Halloween candy.
And then week two hits. Ah, week two. This is where the excuses enter the chat. “This is a dumb month to do this.” “The holiday season is starting. I’m too busy.” “What difference does the exact number 50,000 make, in the scheme of things?” “I have tennis elbow.” “I’m out of candy.” You start moving into Act 2, where so many stories get abandoned. In my case, I’ve scrapped about 15,000 words of this story half a dozen times in the past two years. Week two is The Bad Place.
But ha! I, friends, am not an amateur. I am armed and ready. I am not out of candy. I am in fact nowhere near out of candy. I switched the house over from Halloween to Christmas, so I have pretty lights and the TV fireplace going. I’ve got a cozy cup of tea, and I can pretend it’s not 70 degrees outside. I’ve got a friend who is well ahead of me, whose word count can inspire and motivate me. She’s a better writer than I am, but that’s hardly the point, is it? They’re just words! Nobody said they had to be good words! I can write words! I am famously a prodigious babbler!
I’ve totally got this. But if you’d like to heckle me a little bit, just to make sure, you know where to find me.
*Post title adapted from The Good Place.