Like several of the Ruby Slippered Sisters, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year, and I’m not exactly on track compared to where I should be on the tenth day. My inner critic is screeching about my failure from the box I tossed her into at the start of November…but more on her in a moment. This post is about setting goals vs. meeting goals, and using NaNoWriMo as a way to jumpstart your writing (even if you’re not quite on track, haven’t started, or aren’t participating).

For those of you who haven’t heard of this particular torture, NaNoWriMo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month. For the month of November, writers around the world lock themselves away, sweating, sobbing, and ignoring all else to write 50,000 words. That’s around 1667 words per day.

When I signed up to post this blog a few weeks ago, I was still in the throes of a fantasy. I had done NaNoWriMo once before, writing approximately 15,000 words, procrastinating with the belief that I could write 35,000 words over Thanksgiving weekend, and then ultimately abandoning the goal in favor of a prolonged, leftover-sustained tryptophan coma. This time, though, it would be different. I would write in coffeeshops across the land, the light of my Art shining from my eyes as I crafted scenes of beauty and despair while mere mortals stumbled about their mornings. I would write every day, always exceeding my goal, and finish ahead of schedule. And the first draft would be so good that I would turn it into a finished novel by February at the latest.

Now, though, it’s time to write this blog, and this is a chronicle of my real NaNoWriMo:

Day 1: 3542 words. I was oh-so-smug. Never mind that it was a Sunday and I did nothing else that day; my victory seemed assured.

Day 2: 1344 words. Not quite 1667, but after my impressive debut, I could afford to skip the last 300 words in favor of a reasonable bedtime.

Day 3: 1178 words. Again below goal, but I had dinner plans, and two glasses of wine were not conducive to further work. I dreamed wine-fueled fantasies of success.

Day 4: 1489 words. Better –- and still ahead of schedule, given my great first day. And with the weekend awaiting, I would surely catch up from any weekday deficits.

Day 5: 1897 words. The Muse smiled upon me, and for a couple of perfect hours on Thursday night, everything flowed from my fingers like I was born to tell this story.

Day 6: 0 words. It was a Friday, after all; can’t a girl take a break? I had a close friend in town, and she took precedence over my heroine. Bigger, the Muse smiled slyly on me again –- but that tricky wench gave me a perfect idea for my heroine’s development. Too bad it would require researching and rewriting significant portions of the work in progress…

Day 7: 0 words. I wandered around the city in search of inspiration. The idea for my heroine grew increasingly insistent -– but writing it down would force me to acknowledge everything I would have to change. I had tea at my favorite tea place, browsed through Borders for a couple of hours (and skimmed my fingers across the place on the shelf where my book will sit someday if I ever stop browsing in Borders and write the damn thing), and spent the night reading a romance novel.

Day 8: 0 words. I worked all day, but none of it resulted in a finished word. I did Swiffer my apartment, though, in the vain hope that the Muse would come back if my hair was no longer all over the wood floors.

Day 9: 0 words. Although this blog post feels like it should count, but it doesn’t.

Day 10: ??

TOTAL: 9450 words (7216 words behind schedule)

So what is the point of all this? I still consider my NaNoWriMo experience to be a success. This is why:

1) I have 9450 words. I would have had less than 1500 words if left to my own devices without the motivator of NaNoWriMo, which is fantastic even if I’m not at the ~17,000 mark like I should be. So, whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not, set a high target for yourself — you may fall short, but you’ll almost certainly go farther than you normally would.

2) I have a better understanding of where this book will go. Living and breathing your manuscript for NaNoWriMo may make it impossible to have patience with the real world, where there are things like day jobs and bills and housework, but it will give you a much stronger appreciation for your characters and your manuscript. I wouldn’t have gotten to know my heroine so quickly if I hadn’t spent some major quality time with her. Spend some time getting to know your characters; they will reward you for it.

3) I know I can write >1000 words per hour when pressed. They won’t be the best words, and my poor inner critic is clawing at her box to get out and stop me from being less than perfect –- but getting them on the page is essential to being able to fix them. And reminding myself that I’m capable of speed helps on the days when nothing is coming out. Some people use WriteOrDie, others get together with a group and do challenges (like the chat challenge we had on the blog this weekend) — try pushing your speed once in awhile and see what comes out.

4) I’ve figured out how to muzzle my inner critic. I can’t keep her locked up indefinitely –- she’s clever and manages to break free sometimes (another reason I didn’t write on Friday) -– but until the first draft is over, she needs to stay in her box. I like to think it just makes her angry and more eager to draw blood over the second draft, which can actually be useful – she’s just not useful when the story is shyly stepping onto the page like a self-conscious debutante at her first ball. If you have methods for silencing your inner critic, please share them in the comments — I think this is one of the hardest things for most writers to do.

5) This is the pace I will have to maintain (or exceed) to meet my career goals. That’s a harsh truth, but as far as I can calculate it, I would need to produce a book every six months or so to meet my personal definition of success, and I might need to squeeze it down to four. Some people meet their definition of success with fewer books a year than that, but I want this to be a career someday, and I can’t possibly support myself on less than two books a year (unless my wine-fueled dreams of megasuccess come true). To do that, I need to write a first draft in less than two months, and give myself a couple of weeks to let it rest + time to go through a second and third draft. A 90,000-word single title romance in less than two months equals almost exactly the same pace as NaNoWriMo. It makes me a little ill, but there you have it. Stephanie Bond gave a great workshop at RWA Nationals a couple of years ago, and I will always remember her advice to figure out how many words you can write in a year, then determine how many books/novellas/stories that is and plan your career accordingly.

So overall, despite falling off the wagon, I’m very happy that I signed up -– and I highly recommend challenging yourself to something like this at some point, even if it’s not as part of the official NaNoWriMo group. At the very least, give yourself a couple of weeks of critic-free writing time –- it’s amazing what you can come up with when she’s not interfering with your imagination.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? What has your experience been so far? Regardless of your participation, how are you preparing yourself to keep up momentum during the holiday months?