Whew! That was a challenge indeed. In the beginning, it seemed like it was going to be a fairly easy thing to do, but by the end, it became quite challenging with the convergence of Thanksgiving and the start of Christmas. My traveling thrown into the month made for an uneven writing schedule, too. But I did it!! Thank you all for your support and encouragement!
Would I do it again? Absolutely! It was a great way to push me to get those words out, to write “x” number of words each day and keep the novel growing. I found it to be a good challenge for myself and a very rewarding one at that.
How does it compare to the 10K-Day challenge? The 10K-Day challenge was a lot more intense. The stress of getting NaNoWriMo done was spread out, which is usually something I (don’t like, but) can handle better. That intense pressure is something that gets to me. But the 10K day was not overwhelming, so the stress didn’t really get to me. It’s like the NaNoWriMo challenge is like the stress of getting a term paper done. You have time, but in the end, you stress to get it polished and completed in those last 24 hours. I think the 10K-Day is more like waiting tables. I found, when I was a server in a restaurant, that the stress was more intense, more “this minute”, you are juggling several things and you have so many things to get done “right now” when you’re busy. That’s not the kind of stress I enjoy. And, I found that I couldn’t handle the stress of waiting tables. My hats off to those who do that for a living. That’s why I tip the way I do.
What’s your next challenge? No more writing challenges for now! I’m taking on another “write a passage from the Bible each day for the month of December” challenge to better immerse myself and focus my spirit on the meaning of Christmas. I found the passage a day for November to help do that for the Thanksgiving season. I will get back to work on the sequel for “The Lady Bornekova“. I’m a bit over halfway done with that one and I am so eager to get back into it!
So, I leave you with these thoughts…maybe I should change the word “challenge” to “goals”. I think goals are very important. I had a lot of goals for November and I feel very accomplished about what I got done, but only because I had goals. If I hadn’t had those goals, I probably would have gotten things done, but would I be able to mark their completion the same way? Probably not. So, I encourage you…even challenge you, to set yourself some goals for this month. Not hard-set-can’t-miss goals, but just some things to aim for. You’ll never know what you can accomplish until you try.