We’re halfway there!  Who’s panicking?

Tomorrow’s Events:

Clinton Twp: 6:00-9:00

Are you coming to the Midway on Saturday?  Today may be the halfway point of the month, but the midway is THE MIDWAY.  Impress everyone with your tastiest potluck dish and rack up some words.  It’s also your LAST CHANCE to order a shirt this year.

There’s a new event planning thread in the forum for Nano Boot Camp.  We want to do a one day event that’s all word wars, all the time, with an intensity you’ve only ever dreamed of.  Head over there to voice your interest.

And now, beautiful people, let’s talk.  You’ve gotten a bunch of pep talks and encouraging posts and tweets so far.  Those are all very important and very true, and you should definitely take them to heart.  But here, at this halfway point, I’m going to talk about something else.  I’m going to talk about failure.

Don’t be afraid!  This is not a bad thing.  You see, at this point in the month, we’re all pretty much in one of three spots.  Either you’re on track and confidant, or you’re near the line and starting to worry, or you’re way below the line and in despair.  It’s you guys in that last group that I’m talking to, and I say unto you: do not despair.

You know how it goes.  You got busy at work or school.  You got sick.  Your computer died.  Your hamster is in the hospital.  You hate your story.  You love your story TOO MUCH.  Your muse is MIA.  Your hands fell off.  A literal bomb went off in your house and now you have to clean it all up before Thanksgiving.  You’re barricaded in your house by zombies and have to bike pedal the generator to charge your laptop.  For whatever reason, you are deeply, desperately behind, and all the encouraging pep talks in the world are not going to help you win.  It’s just not realistically possible for you to get to 50k this year.

Well, I’m here to tell you, That.  Is.  Okay.  You wanted to win, and now you will fail, and you are sad.  That is okay.  Failure is okay.

What you should NOT do is quit.  Don’t quit!  Never quit!  Keep going, keep writing.  So you won’t hit 50.  Can you hit 40?  30?  Can you strive to write at least a little bit every day, even if it’s only a few words?  Can you make it to some of the events and have a good time, even though you’re still not reaching the line?  As long as you stick it out, you win.  If you get even a sentence out of it that you like, you win.

Give yourself permission to fail.  Embrace the failure.  That way you can at least try to learn from it and relax and have a good time.  Because if you stress yourself out, you’re just going to be unhappy, and stressing out is not going to get your wordcount any higher.

I WANT you to succeed.  I WANT you to push yourself as hard as you can to get up to that line.  I want your progress bars to turn green an you to get that winner under your name.  I want that for you.  And you’d be surprised how far behind you can be and still reach down deep and pull out more words than you thought you had inside you and come up with a big win.  But if that’s not going to happen, and you know that you can’t make it happen, I want you to be okay with yourself.

Be okay.

Now, let’s get out there and make the second half of the month even better than the first.