I officially embarked on my novel-writing journey in November, through a nationwide challenge called National Novel Writing Month — or NaNoWriMo for short. The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. This was the first time I had attempted it, and by far the first time I ever tried to write this much, especially all at once. Well the good news is that I “won” the contest!

NaNoWriMo was the perfect way to dive into my story. I have been outlining and worldbuilding for this series for almost three year. So it was finally time to sit down and write the actual story. Still, I must admit the goal seemed a little intimidating, and as you can see from the word count tracker graph above, I fell further and further behind throughout the month. I knew I would have more time during the final week of November, and a few times I almost caught up to “par,” but it felt uncertain at times.

I suppose any worthwhile goal feels this way. It’s hard to get started. There’s uncertainty and anxiety as to whether you will prevail. You have to fight through self-doubt and keep moving forward, without looking back. Indeed, one of the cardinal rules of NaNoWriMo was “don’t stop to edit, just keep writing.” Part of that is because the lack of time, and the other part is because trying to edit and be creative at the same time doesn’t work so well. You can’t be too self-critical when you need to give yourself freedom to create new things.

In the first half to three-quarters of 2018, I will be writing the rest of Draft 1, then working on the second draft. I’m projecting twice as many more words remain as I’ve written, and I plan to go at a less frenetic pace. Still, knowing how much I am capable of writing was a huge morale boost. Have you ever set a crazy goal for yourself and been energized when you accomplished it?