At just before 6:00 pm today, I reached, and slightly surpassed, the goal of 25,000 words I set for myself not quiet thirty days ago. I feel an incredible sense of achievement which, quiet frankly, could prove to do more harm than good.
While I have successfully crafted nearly 30,000 words on a long-form story, the novel isn’t complete. As it is, I have worked my way through about half of my original outline. This means I still have, likely, another 25,000 words to go. Without the impetus of a goal, and the consequence of a grade behind it, I’m wondering if the last 25,000 words will actually make it onto the page. Knowing I can do something, isn’t the same thing as being motivated to do it. Once a mountain is conquered, do people really feel the desire to conquer it again?
Camp NaNoWriMo starts in just over a couple of weeks. While I am not, at this moment, inclined to attempt another 25,000 words again, I believe setting a goal of 12,500 words will allow me to keep that lovely pace of writing a few pages by hand, then revising them as I enter them into my word processor. I will of course, need a new goal, something tangible.
Perhaps I can decide which of my friends I’m going to look forward to torturing with the completed rough draft? Or perhaps, I can make a wager of a significant amount which will motivate me to plant my but in the chair, and put my hands to the keyboard. I might pledge to provide $100.00 dollars to a worthy cause if I do not complete this story. The point is to attach a consequence to either doing, or not doing, the work to tell this story in full.
Cadence McKinnon 