The wall sucks – Day #16 and Update

I am, by nature, an overachiever.  Succeeding at things makes me feel good, and as a result I the more I succeed the more I feel I’ve achieved and the happier I feel.

It has absolutely nothing to do with ‘beating’ anyone else or ‘winning’.  I just like to challenge myself and achieve things.

I am, by extension, a NaNo overachiever.   My current word count (at 8:30pm on Day 16) is 84,043 words.

What can I say?  I love to write.  I type quickly.  The words (until recently) have been flowing fairly easily.  My ‘bad days’ are often ridiculously not bad in comparison to many other people’s bad days.

But again.  This isn’t about other people.  This is about me.

The thing I’ve found about overachieving for both NaNo’s (or, achieving, considering I simply set myself higher goals to challenge myself), is that it opens up a lot of criticism from some people.  Not necessarily direct criticism, but a mindset that people who have written more or have higher goals don’t deserve to complain about things such as the week 2 wall or bad days or struggling.  Because, you know, words.

The problem with this is that NaNo is an individual thing, which means people have individual goals and rates and paces and struggles.  And just because someone has different struggles or goals, it doesn’t make the inferior, or not valid, or not worthy.

The wall hit me HARD this week.  I think it was a mix of uni work (which is finished), the fact I ran out of planning and my plot took a very sudden unexpected twist, and the fact that I am RIDICULOUSLY tired.  If I gave myself the opportunity to close my eyes right now, I would be asleep and not finish this blog post or write a single thing for today. SO TIRED.  So yeah.  The wall hit.  And yet so many people’s attitude was simply ‘that doesn’t matter, you’re already ahead’.

Um.

What?

Firstly, it doesn’t matter if the wall hits at 10k or 80k.  The wall is the wall and it sucks.  It’s hard.  It’s miserable.  So someone’s word count really doesn’t matter when the wall hits.

Secondly, I may be ahead on the recommended word count for the day tally, but that doesn’t mean I’m ahead on my own goals.

I realise this probably just sounds like a lot of complaining from someone who is fortunate to have the time/plot/ability/motivation/whatever to write a lot of words a day, most days.  But you know what, it’s still valid.  Because it’s still the wall, and it still sucks.

So, anyway.  Goals for this week:

Reach at least 75,000 words for my NaNo novel: My word counts for the week went as follows:
Monday: 55,083
Tuesday: 55,083
Wednesday: 55,083
Thursday: 70, 249
Friday: 80,025
Saturday: 84,043
*Sunday: 85,067

Blog every day this week with a NaNo update: Not quite every day because there would have been a lot of ‘didn’t write lol’ and ‘wrote but wall and gah and what is even happening with my plot???’

Visit the WIPpeteers: I think I READ everyone’s post, but whether or not I actually commented is a different story…

Submit politics report: DONE

Submit history essay: DONE

NEW GOALS FOR THIS WEEK! 

Finish NaNo novel and reach 100,000 words: This should hopefully be achievable, although it might take a lot of effort if my brain continues to refuse to cooperate.

Get back into Rebellion rewrites: I’m hoping I’ll have finished my NaNo novel by Wednesday at the latest (it only has a few thousand words left in it I think), so then it will be back to Rebellion rewrites and edits! Yay!

Blog every day with NaNo updates: Self explanatory.

Visit the Wippeteers: Because they’re awesome and they make me happy.

And that’s it, because that’s more than enough work for me this week!

Hope you all had successful weeks, whatever that means for you!