Urgh, I have seriously fallen behind with NaNoWriMo this week. Instead of taking responsibility for it, I would like to blame my partner. Before November I made him promise that when I got home from work he would be firm and make me write my 1700 words before allowing me to have dinner and watch a film with him.
“You need to be strict with me”, I said. “If I don’t meet my wordcount then you can’t let me relax with you alright?”
“Sure,” he replied. I had faith that he was going to be firm and dicipline me, so that I had no choice but to get on with Nano. The first week was alright, because I wanted to do it. As soon as I got back from work I cracked on to it, banging out at least 2000 words. But this week it’s been a different story. When I have come home from work I have just wanted to climb into bed with a hot meal and watch a DVD.
On the few occasions I did motivate myself to start working on Nano, I only wrote about 1000 words before I became bored and disillusioned with the whole thing thinking. I didn’t know why I was writing this, or where the story was going, if anywhere, so I kept saying to myself “It doesn’t matter, I have a week off next week so I’ll do it then.” And where was my partner in all this? Was he putting down his foot and commanding me to continue whatever problems I faced? Was he kicking me up the bum and telling me to get on with it? Er…no, was he heck. He was saying things like “Right, I’m taking the night off, care to join me?” and “Ooh look, three comedy DVDs have come from Lovefilm, fancy watching all three of them tonight?”. So my plan failed and it’s all his fault.
Well actually, no it isn’t. It’s my fault for trying to push the responsibiliy of motivating myself to do NaNo onto someone else. I have learnt that it is a big mistake to expect others to force you into doing it. You and only you, can make yourself write. No one, especially not your partner, wants to be making you do something you don’t want to do, and it’s certainly not in my partner’s nature to do that, so I don’t know why I relied on the idea that he would. Even if he had put a gun to my head and made me start typing, I doubt I would have been able to come up with something. The truth is, I can’t just write on demand. I have to be inspired, I have to be in the mood to write, and I have to really want to get on with it, or else I won’t, and that’s noone’s fault but mine. I think I have learned my lesson.
So this week I am off work, but instead of being able to relax I am faced with
tirelessly trying to catch up with my word count. I’ve written 3586 words today, which is the most I have written in one day so far, bringing my word count to 18621. But to get myself back on track I need to get to 23400 words by the end of today, which is another 4779 words, meaning in total I will have to write a whopping 8365 words. I don’t even know whether I can do that yet, but I have to try. Today the writing has flowed a lot better, and I do want to finish it now.
So I’d better go and get started. Wish me luck!
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