Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Final Stretch

Tomorrow is November 30, which means I have a little more than 24 hours (OK, 29 hours to be exact) to add 3.5k to my WiP in order to reach my 15k goal for this month. Isn't that sad? Also, I have a work event tomorrow night so I will be lucky if I get 1k in after that.

YIPES!

I'm also smack dab in the "dreaded middle" and it is a bit dreadful. Then I look at all of the other people doing NaNoWriMo and achieving their 50k goals and I feel a bit ashamed how I'm struggling to reach just 15k. Stupid day job and super long commute, and my own lazy butt! But then I remember that I've been working on this since February. I am a very SLOW writer, and I've written more than a third of this WiP in the last few weeks alone. Plus it's my very first WiP ever so it's bound to be tougher.

Maybe I can be proud of the progress I've made this month. Even though I've heard this a million times, I shouldn't compare myself to other writers. Maybe I'm more like the turtle than the hare, but didn't the turtle win the race? Not that the hares out there can't win the race sometimes too. (Maybe I should've chosen a different metaphor?)

Anyway, sorry for the slightly whiney post today. I really liked L.T. Host's post yesterday about what you guys want to read about on this blog. And it's nice to meet some of the lurkers out there too. You like us, you REALLY like us! *throws candy*

What do you do when you find yourself agonizing over other people's successes? Or finishing their first draft (yay Adam!) or getting an agent or being in the "groove" and hammering out 10k in a day? Is the answer chocolate? (Please say it's chocolate.)


I better get back to it if I'm going to reach my goal. Good luck if you're working on a (fake) NaNo project too!

By the way, either next week or the week after I am going to have a guest on my post. She is self-pubbing her book and is doing a blog tour. I can't wait!

4 comments:

Adam Heine said...

Chocolate is good. I also reread this guest post I wrote for Natalie Whipple (that sounds like really lame self-promotion, but I've really read my own post like 50 times!).

And don't compare. Or if you're going to compare, choose people slower than you. I took 4.5 years to write my first novel. You can beat that.

L. T. Host said...

I am so proud of you, lady! You are doing FABULOUS! And you are actually writing at a normal speed, you know. As I've said before, I'm the freak here. Not you.

You've done so much this month! I can't wait to read it all :)

Keriann Greaney Martin said...

Aw, thanks you guys. I can always count on my writer friends to lift me up.

Adam - That post is awesome. I often forget that published writers were in my shoes once. And this is my FIRST freaking book. And besides your 4.5 years, many other people I know said it took them years to write the first one. Maybe being on Twitter makes it easier to compare myself with people who've been doing this a lot longer than I have.

L.T. - Thank you!! I can't wait for you guys to read the finished draft too instead of 5-page chunks.

BTW - I MIGHT, just might reach my goal tomorrow. I have 1k left to write. But I am le tired now and am going to bed. Whee!

Unknown said...

You should DEFINATELY be proud of how many words you've managed. It's more than you did last November right?

And chocolate is always the answer