NaNoWriMo – Day 25 – Remember Your Goals!
We’re getting ever closer to the end of NaNoWriMo. The end is in sight. The pressure to get to 50,000 is greater than ever.
What happens after the end of November? Will your novel be complete in 50,000 words? You started out this month with the dream of being a NaNoWriMo winner. Now you’ve got tens of thousands of words in front of you. It’s the novel that you’ve been thinking about writing for ages, right in front of you, coming together right before your eyes. Of course, you still want to win NaNoWriMo, but you’re also starting to realize that your book is nearly finished too.
Suddenly your goals have changed. Your focus has been split into two. Should you be focusing on getting to 50,000 words? Or should you be polishing your novel?
Now, at first glance, those two goals sound pretty similar, but actually they are vastly different. If you follow your NaNoWriMo aim of getting to 50,000 words then you’re not doing any editing, you’re not going back and proofreading anything. It doesn’t matter if what you just wrote isn’t quite perfect, because the time for editing is after the 30th November.
However, if your goal is completing your novel, then there is a temptation to start editing now. That loss of focus is going to slow you down and that might just cost you your NaNoWriMo glory.
No matter how excited you are about making your novel perfect, don’t turn your back on winning NaNoWriMo! Being a NaNoWriMo winner is akin to finishing a marathon. It’s intense, it’s exhausting and it’s something that you can be proud of for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t get to mile 24 and just decide that you’re no longer interested in finishing. Push through, no matter how tempted you are to start editing your manuscript, and win NaNoWriMo!
Keep writing! You’ve got this.
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