Sorry to you lovely subscribers— I missed my weekly blog post. I don’t know if YOU missed the weekly blog post, but I’m too tired to worry about that.

I haven’t been burning the candles at both ends. I took the candle and dropped it in a hot vat of oil. I’m exhausted. NaNoWriMo has kicked my ass, and I caused myself a lot of the suffering. How?

A graphic can show you better than my words can…

While you look at the bar graph, let me explain what it means. This is my daily word count. Look what happens at Day 11. Do you see that concave scoop leading up to today? (November 26 = Day 26). That means I jerked around and either didn’t write or didn’t meet the daily quota. Why?

Because my story completely stumped me. I ran into a rough patch and I lost the confidence I could write my way out of trouble. I didn’t write my way out of it but I finally got the courage to keep writing crappy pages. So I’m at 40,925 words with 5 days left. I need to keep a pace of 2200 words a day to finish on time. In the middle of the month, around November 18th, I needed an average of 3000 words a day to finish. After a couple weekend marathon writing sessions, I chipped the word count back to human levels of productivity.

I share all this for two reasons…

First, the bar graph, and the way I feel right now— like I’m drowning behind the wake of an ocean liner— came about because I let fear win for a few days there. One of the best things about NaNoWriMo is that I receive physical, hard evidence of what a little productivity each day can do. It’s so much easier to show up every day rather than the way I did it. This month’s bar graph has been the equivalent of promising a buddy you’ll run the L.A. Marathon and don’t train until two weeks before the race.

Second, and most important— I have to salute all of you that have tried National Novel Writing Month but have set it aside after 30,000 words, or 1 week, or 2 days. It’s difficult. When we face fear and get out of our comfort zone, we’re… fearful and uncomfortable.

Even though I’ve done NaNoWriMo three other times, I forgot what it’s like and actually suffered under the delusion it would be easy this year. I love my story idea, but I’d forgotten that to get it on the page is WORK. Writing will always be work.

I think I'll make it to 50,000 words this year, but this challenge mirrors so many other aspects of my life. How often do I turn to the other path, or convince myself I don’t really want something because it’s hard, strikes fear in me, and makes me feel uncomfortable?

I’m keeping this short because my hands are on fire and my eyes can’t hold the toothpicks up anymore.

I truly appreciate all of you who’ve joined me on the challenge, have cheered on as a spectator, and those of you who’ve parked our coffee dates until December 1st.

(I can’t count these words towards the 50k, can I?…)