Not Exactly Booking Along

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may have noticed that I’m kind of into National Novel Writing Month.

It’s going on right now, and this is the fifth year I’m participating. But…

It’s looking like I won’t finish my novel this year.

Rather than being depressed about it, though, I’m taking it as a sign of progress. Because in the past, I would have gotten all control-freaky about it.

Well…to be honest, I kind of started out that way this year, too. You see, this Sunday I’m going to NaNoWriMo’s annual fundraising write-a-thon, The Night of Writing Dangerously. At this event, there is much frivolity. There are noir-ish costumes which would inspire even Dashiell Hammett. There is dinner. There is a candy buffet the likes of which causes even the strongest of constitution to swoon. There are pep talks and raffle prizes.

But mostly there is writing.

And if a rampantly noveling author actually manages to finish his or her 50,000 words not by the deadline of midnight on November 30, but at the write-a-thon itself, much glory accrues to said author. Who is cheered roundly by all assembled, gets to wear a large crown for the rest of the evening, and is generally made much of.

So of course I decided that I wanted to finish my novel at the write-a-thon.

Ah, the authorial hubris.

I’d clearly bitten off more than I could chew. A lot more.

Several days later, as I sat staring at my bedroom wall in an almost catatonic stupor, I mustered the energy for a single thought. “Where on earth did this crippling depression come from all of a sudden?”

Thankfully, because of all the attention I’ve paid to my perfectionism patterns over the last several years, I’ve become very, very good at spotting them in action. So I was able to understand almost immediately that I’d set myself up for an effort that wasn’t very good for me at all.

Sure, I could have pushed myself. Lost sleep, gone into an utter writing frenzy. But for what? Out of the four times I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo in the past, I’ve won (i.e., completed over 50,000 words during the month) three of those times.

I realized I no longer need to prove to myself that I can do this.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Literally. Not to mention the coffee mug.

Nope—this year, what I need to prove to myself is that I have the ability to let go of this really, really fun but still arbitrarily chosen goal. To understand that the world will continue spinning on its axis even if I log less words than originally planned.

But also, to keep on writing anyway.

It would be just another manifestation of all-or-nothing thinking if I were to simply quit. It feels important to me to keep going even in the knowledge that my word-count bar on the NaNoWriMo website will almost certainly stay blue and incomplete rather than brilliant, glowing purple and adorned with a “Winner!” graphic.

I think that if I “lose” this year, it will be a significant win for me, because it will show me how far I’ve come in my battle against struggle with personal exploration of my own perfectionism.

So even though I probably won’t officially finish my 50,000 words this year…

This may be my most important NaNoWriMo year ever.

And it will be nice to close the book (heh) on such a significant lesson learned.

Tagged as: creativity, goals, letting go, projects