If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve made it through the first week of November and are on track with your word count, Not far enough behind to be worried, Or are gaining momentum from a late start.
Fuck yeah! Good for you. Keep it up. But let me say that the first week is (usually) never the hard part. If you’ve done this before, you know that. If you haven’t, SURPRISE! Up to this point, you’ve had cheerleaders, and it’s likely none of your buddies have dropped off or stopped posting regularly. Yet. If you’re on social media, you’ve got the momentum of thousands of folks simultaneously striving toward the same goal, and that goes a long way toward filling the bucket of creativity. But soon, that may change. Many things can slow you down and make you doubt the finish line. To meet this goal, you must train the muscles of routine and determination. So, what are you supposed to do when the wind vanishes, and your sails fall limp? Or the ship must cook a big holiday dinner and host 30 people? Or a plague befalls your ship? Or your ship is forced to sail through the carpal tunnel of love?
There’s an old white guy named GK Chesterton (if that even is his real name) who wrote a bit of advice about this. But I only figured that out a few weeks ago. Strangely enough, I learned this from my grandmother, who also told me to, “Want in one hand and shit in the other. We’ll see which one gets filled first.”
But that’s not the Chesterton quote. This is:
A thing worth doing, is worth doing poorly. –G. K. Chesterton
If it’s worth doing. You do it. You find a way, even if you’re shit at it. If you can’t manage a monster four-hour writing session, you can sit down for fifteen and do one sprint. If you’re feeling ill and find yourself playing a game or watching TV to pass the miserable time, you can also find some time to envision your next scene, and take some notes. Extra points if you’re medicated, and it ends up like a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream where he meets the Hat Man. The point being, something is always better than nothing, even if that something is half-assed, or weird.
The best part of this advice is the fact that it spans the gamut of people and their abilities. From the able to the disabled, the barely literate to the over-educated, every single person can benefit from this advice. It meets you where you currently are. You don’t have to quit if you have ten minutes compared to the hour you usually get. You can use five-minute increments, work within the chaos, inside whatever body you’re lucky enough to be inside of, even if you need to brainstorm accommodations for yourself. Instead of giving up, you can take it easy for a while and focus your imagination. Instead of quitting when you know you’re going to come up short, you can adjust your goal. If you think your writing is worth it, then everything/anything you do toward that goal is worth it.
I’m in the thick of my new sapphic PNW witchy/shifter story and realizing it’s going to be harder than I expected. The optimism from my hindsight is packing up to flee the building. Now comes the time to do the work. I wanted to be days further ahead than I currently am, because I know that later in the month there will be a horrible grab for all my attention. Yet, even if I take a break for a day to hunt up my wrist braces (mine is the ship going through that cursed carpal tunnel), I will not give up. Even if I come up short of my 50k goal, I’ll have written so much more than I would have without this challenge. And that, my friends, is the whole point.
Even if we don’t win, it is still worth doing. I hope that I’ve convinced you to bring this weird little quote into your motivational lexicon. It’s done more for me than my grandmother and some old white guy with a funny name will ever know.
I wish you all the best of luck with your projects this month.