How to accomplish things.

I had such plans for this long weekend. I would focus solely on my novel. I would write page upon page of (hopefully) very good work, and eventually reach the goal I had set for myself: 20 000 words. I would, in short, Accomplish Things.

Or, you know, not.

As inevitably seems to happen to me when I set these lofty goals, I ended up being very busy, distracted, cold, tired and rushed. I was lucky to get over 1000 words done a day, and in the excitement of it all I just about forgot I had a blog post to write. Yes. Time management is apparently not my strong suit.

But, see, then I started thinking. NaNo for me comes at an ideal time of year, because as soon as my exams are over I have the entire month to do whatever I please. So I can write until 4am without anyone frowning at me the next day for waking up at noon, and nobody gets annoyed if I break off in the middle of a conversation to run and write something down. November is an easy month. June, so it would seem, is not. In fact, I have quite a lot on my plate at the moment, and trying to work in ~2000 words a day on top of that is proving quite difficult.

Hello, I told myself. That is the entire point of SoCNoC.

Aha, you say. Now it is finally sinking in.

Week 2 is affectionately known as The Slump in NaNo-land because it's about that point that the excitement and enthusiasm and sheer blind optimism of the first week collides head on with the reality of plot holes, unexpected!relatives and other unavoidable facts of life. If you're behind, stuck, or like me and just not living up to your own (possibly unreasonable) expectations in some way, then you are definitely not alone. There is a reason that trying to write 50k in one month is considered crazy by saner persons than ourselves: it's, you know, kind of possibly almost a little bit sort of hard.

So this is where the real work begins. Anyone can say they're going to write a novel. Quite a few people even say they'll write one in a month. But now that you've got this far, realised how difficult this is going to be, experienced your first setbacks and watched your characters grow out of control (they always do, in my experience – that's part of the writing process) – now that you know what you're getting yourself into, you have to decide all over again that you're going to do this thing. You have a novel that needs to be written! Your characters are depending on you to help them sort out their inevitable dilemmas and problems! An imaginary person who happens to sound a bit like your inner editor has thrown down the gauntlet of challenge and said: I bet you can't do this!

Are you going to let him get away with that? Because that's just rude.

Anyway, my point is, this wouldn't be a challenge if it were easy. So embrace it. If you're behind, add a hundred or so words to your daily count. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to catch you up in about a week or so. Spreading it out over a few days can help ease the burden of having to write oodles of words in one day. Alternatively, if you're the kind of person who works best when you're on a roll, set aside a day where you can catch up several thousand all at once (the 6k in a Day challenge is perfect for this).

If you're stuck, write around it. You're not supposed to be writing The Best Novel Ever in just 30 days! You can do whatever you like, including jumping ahead, going back, or killing off your Main Character to make room for a new (and more obedient) one. Free yourself from the expectation of perfection and get stuck in, because there's no way we're stopping now. So there.