iamdanilamb asked you:Hi! This is my first year doing NaNo and I’m trying really hard to just write but the goal of fifty thousand words is freaking me out! Do you have any advice for this? I want to finish but I feel like I’m freaking myself out on the second day.
My dear iamdanilamb,
Let us consider the number 50,000. It is a non-trivial number. It must be examined and respected, but not feared. It may feel like some strange CREATURE that lives in the corner, staring at you with beady eyes, but this 50,000 has come to help you. It is your FRIEND.
Look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT. It’s doing loop-de-loops around your head, encouraging you to take advantage of this opportunity. Imagine this 50,000 words as a huge room you can dance around. A field you can roll through. You cannot mess this up if you tried.
And 50,000 words, though it seems like an UNGAINLY number, isn’t even as much as you think. It SOUNDS big, but that’s 1,666 words a day. That’s not a huge number. That’s a few emails and a couple of texts. It only seems big because you’ve put an expectation on yourself that you can now THROW AWAY. This is not a text. No one will tase you in the neck if you write the wrong thing, because YOU CANNOT WRITE THE WRONG THING. Give yourself a chance to get it wrong. You’ll get it right later. Listen to Mark Twain. He said:
“You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it.”
And he knew what he was talking about! Now go play with your owl. JUST LOOK AT IT.
With love,
Auntie MJ
