Perfection has a paralyzing effect, have you noticed? You have this Grand Plan. It could involve starting your own business, losing 50 pounds by the holidays this year, becoming a famous blues guitarist, or possibly something that is so unique, so special, so you that you feel it burning inside you, yearning for expression. Whatever it is, it’s BIG.

In my case, it was writing a novel.

Hardly unique–someone once told me that every other person you know dreams of writing a book, and I’d be surprised if it’s that few. But it’ll do to illustrate what I’m talking about. Since, you know, I’ve never tried to climb Mount Everest or anything.

I somehow learned to read at a very young age, and progressed rapidly from Clifford the Big Red Dog to Brave New World. Which I read when I was about 11 years old because I thought it had a cool cover, completely unaware that I was picking up a classic.

Science fiction and fantasy have always been my genres of choice, and even as a teenager I would sometimes think, “Hey, I could write this stuff!” But in my cocky self-assurance I never actually tried, except for a few false starts which never went beyond three pages. That was okay, because I “knew” that I could do it, and would when I was ready.

I’ve been ready for almost 20 years now. And I’ve tried to write a novel enough times to recognize my youthful hubris for what it was. Writing is damn hard, and writing something so lengthy is damn hard multiplied by 1,000.

When I finally conceded the level of difficulty involved, I was well and truly humbled, and I inwardly prostrated myself at the feet of all novel-writers past and present in abject apology. (Well, at the feet of the good novel-writers, at least. A woman has her pride.) The fire of my writing desire was banked, though not fully extinguished.

Then I discovered NaNoWriMo.

NaNo-huh??? Allow me to explain by way of a very short story.

The difficulty I’ve always had is with constructing a plot. Intriguing characters with rich backstories I can create by the dozen. I can do world-building pretty well, too, thinking through all the what-ifs of a culture I’ve created in my imagination. But to come up with an interesting narrative trajectory for my characters to travel? Nuh-uh. Never could do it in a way that kept me interested, let alone a potential posse of readers.

So one day about four years ago I was trawling the web for books on plot construction and I found one called No Plot? No Problem!Intrigued, I ordered it, only to discover that it wasn’t about plot construction per se. Rather, it described, in author Chris Baty’s hysterically funny prose, this odd-sounding event called National Novel Writing Month. Or NaNoWriMo for short.

This worldwide event happens every November, and you can join and participate through the Internet as well as organize and/or attend local write-ins if you live near other WriMos.

I joined, and wrote my first novel that November.

On day #1 I blocked so hard on the fantasy novel I tried to write that I simply could not move forward. I wasn’t ready to be quite thatimperfect yet. But I still reaaaaally wanted to do NaNo (as we affectionately call it), so on day #2 I switched gears and started a story about, amazingly enough, a woman about my age living in San Francisco, not liking her job, and looking for a career change. I guess it’s true we write what we know.

No matter—I finished the novel. All 50,000+ words of it. (50K is the goal at which you can officially finish and declare yourself a winner.)

If you want to write a book but your inner perfectionist has been keeping you from doing it like mine did for so long, I can’t recommend NaNoWriMo highly enough. You can do it on your own at any time, of course, but the support you get by doing it with everyone else in November makes the wait worthwhile.

What makes the program so effective? It allows you to barrel right past your critical mind. You have to write so much so fast that quality concerns fly out the window—you just don’t have time for them. “I can edit later” becomes your mantra. And the amazing thing is that once you push past your initial resistance, get into the flow, and establish a daily writing routine, you realize it’s completely feasible to write 50,000 words or more in a month if you just keep writing and don’t overthink it.

It’s fun, it’s intense, and it’s probably the best training program for recovering perfectionists I’ve ever found.

Maybe I’ll see you on www.nanowrimo.org this November.

Tags: letting go, non-judgment, surprises

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