Using NaNoWriMo to Challenge Myself

I have been taking the time in my afternoons and weekends to start a story for National Novel Writing Month. Many of you have probably heard of NaNoWriMo and the process of attempting to write 50,000 words in a single month. I do have to admit that the challenge is daunting and unexpectedly rewarding at the same time.

I am 6 days into writing my first novel. I missed the first day of writing, but was able to make up the word count by putting in some extra time this week. I currently have 21 words more than the target goal of 10,000 and that’s something that I didn’t expect. But I’ve done it.

Personally, NaNoWriMo has been an excellent confidence booster and a nice way to retroactively erase the doubts that certain people have shown in me. One such instance is a teacher I had in high school that declared it was “ironic” that I dreamt of being writer, as I had no concept of sentence structure, grammar, et al. I was shown this review by one of the disciplinarians at my high school and I took it as a major insult. What I hadn’t realized until much later in life was that I should have taken this as a challenge.

It should have served as an honest critique of my work and a hurdle to get past. Everyone knows that when putting your work out there, you will receive criticism and insults. Especially in the time since my high school days, this has become increasingly true. You will never be at a loss of people who find you irritating in one way or another, and they will gladly be vocal about it.

This isn’t about those people or how to deal with them. This article is about everyone seeing those people as an opportunity rather than a threat. There will never be a time when all of everyone will agree on most topics. Even if you have a good friend who will agree with you most times, I’m willing to bet there’s one topic that’s just off limits in your discussions with them. That’s just human nature, there’s nothing you can do about it.

The problem happens when you start to believe these outside voices telling you that you can’t do it, or you aren’t good enough. More often than not, those voices end up echoing internally for the remainder of your life. That is what you need to fight against. Your own self-doubt. The idea that the task is too daunting to complete or even begin. That feeling of wanting to do something, but somehow being under the impression that you can’t.

NaNoWriMo has helped me with these internal struggles. The voices of those who have doubted me throughout my life have ended up echoing internally for so long that I’ve come to think of it as reality. This isn’t always the case, and figuring out which is real and which is self doubt goes a long way to discovering what you’re actually capable of.

You don’t have to participate in NaNoWriMo, but I do encourage you to take all of the negative thoughts in your head and turn them into challenges. Every time you think you can’t do something, instead change it to a bet. “I bet you can’t complete that,” and let that challenge drive you to the finish line.

We are all better than we perceive ourselves, and I encourage you to realize it.