I Did It! 50,000 Words!

Well, I did it. By the time I'm finished with this essay, I'll have written 50,000 words during the month of November. It wasn't easy, and after I quickly fell behind just a few days into the month, I wondered if my goal was unrealistic.

But with enough persistence and hard work, I made it happen. No, I won't win any money for finishing. And no one will give me any awards. But I set a difficult goal for myself and achieved it. I'm proud of myself, and I believe this will help me in the long run.

Going into this, I wasn't expecting it to be easy. I also was hoping that I would learn a lot both about myself and the writing process. And I can say that I was right on both counts. Here are some of my observations after having participated in this over the past 30 days:

1. Finding time requires effort. I have a full-time job, plus plenty of family obligations. We had a major holiday (Thanksgiving), and since my wife and I hosted, we both had a lot of work to do. If I had unlimited free time, I probably could have written 50,000 words in a week. But with everything else going on in my life, I had to take extra effort to make time. There were several nights that I sat at the computer and wrote when I didn't feel like it. But when you're working with a tight deadline, every minute matters. I stayed up later than I wanted to a few nights and gave up some relaxation time, but I knew I had to be persistent if I wanted to reach my goal.

2. Thinking of topics isn't hard, but it requires effort. I didn't go the traditional route for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where many people try to write a 50,000 word novel. I'm sure that's a challenge in itself, trying to keep the story going and getting it written in such a short time. I wrote a bunch of nonfiction essays and also counted some work assignments and letters to my wife. Hey, why shouldn't those count? I wrote a total of 49 letters and essays, and while I didn't strain to come up with topics, I had to think about it. Usually, I write on whatever topics casually come into my head with little effort, but to get to 50,000 words I had to brainstorm and think deeply about what I could write about. I realized that I had a lot more to write about than I knew I had.

3. I didn't have time to carefully proofread everything. For the first several days of the month, I would go back and read what I wrote two or three extra times. But when I got towards the end of the month, I realized I wasn't going to have time to carefully proofread everything. There were a few essays I didn't even re-read at all. I don't have time, and plus it strains my brain. Again, with unlimited free time, I could have proofread everything I wrote and improved it. But NaNoWriMo writing doesn't have to be perfect. It's about stretching your brain and forcing you to keep writing. I can always go back and proofread later, especially if I decide to post or publish anything I wrote.

4. I feel more like a writer. I feel less like a guy who just writes in his spare time and more like a writer. Sure, I've written a book that was 70,000 words, but I did that over the course of ten months. Having written at the rate I have over the past month, I feel the energy that I imagine other writers have, of sitting at the computer and grinding your way through a writing goal and stretching the limits of your patience and imagination. It's given me a new perspective on the writing life.

5. This isn't the end. So I achieved a big goal. But that doesn't mean I stop writing. I'm hoping I can take what I achieved and build on it, to know that I am capable of accomplishing a lot and of pushing myself even more. I plan to take a little time off, perhaps a few days or so, to recover and to celebrate what I did. But it will be for nothing if I don't continue to pursue my writing goals. I'm hoping that someday, I can look back on November 2017 as a critical time in my development as a writer and remember my time of participating in NaNoWriMo fondly.