Monday, 17 November 2008

The problem with winning

I've won NaNoWriMo. No matter what I do from now — won.

While this is a fantastic feeling, it's dangerous, too. The NNWM graph doesn't go any higher than 50k; it's like anything higher doesn't matter.

I know this isn't true, and I'm still excited about my story and where it's going. (Part of me wonders if this shows something wrong with it already... am I not writing it properly? Everything I've read, my own experience, all says that I should be thoroughly sick of my story by this stage.)

The other Kiwi aiming for 100,000 words mentioned, when he hit 50k a few days ago, how much his motivation lagged afterwards. I hoped it wouldn't happen to me, but I think it's hard not to lose a little drive.

It's such a good feeling — I've done it! I've won! — that it's easy to forget how much of a long haul there still is left to go.

I've found it interesting that the stages in my story are still coming at the same places, proportionally. My motivation levels, writer's block, plot climaxes, character development etc are occurring at the same stages of the month, not at the same word counts.

Now that I'm at 50k, it's harder to keep going. I'm lacking the push.

It may all be in my head, because I was expecting this to happen. But I need to make myself keep writing, at least 1000 words a day, and trying to catch up so I can have 75,000 by Saturday (hey, it could happen).

It seems incredible how much I've done, and I feel my writing classes, reading and previous novels all helping me.

Anyway — it's past 11pm, so I'm off to get my 1000 words.

I won't let myself lose motivation.

Total words today: 1009.
Total words overall: 51,126.

1 comment:

Kerryn Angell said...

I found the same thing last year when I was aiming for 60K. Once I hit 50,000 I felt like I had finished, all my motivation fled. So I really do think it's one thing to reach 50K and quite another to reach any goal past that.