Tips & Tricks #6: Checking Out the Competition

My first year of Nanowrimo there were 14,000 people signed up. I had a story that had been churning around in my brain for years and I felt that I finally had the bugs worked out of it. I was, as they say, at the height of my game.

And on the night of October 31, my grandmother died. I changed my plan with mere minutes to go before the writing could officially commence. I spent the first week of November either in route or actually in Phoenix attending her funeral. And writing. Every day, I wrote. I would write like a fiend every night, usually upwards of 2,500 words. I wrote while crying, I wrote while laughing, I wrote alone or surrounded by mourning family.

Then, on the 13th of November, I found out I was being laid off. I had a month to find a new job. So, I got my resume together. And I wrote.

Here's the thing: what spurred me to write like the wind was not the fact that my circumstances were bad. What spurred me to write was the fact that when one searched the Nanowrimo site, one could plainly see all the other writers out there whose word counts were...improbable. There was one that first year whose word count bar indicated 999,999 (the highest the indicator goes) but whose novel consisted of its title endlessly repeated. There were several like that, and they were at the top of the list. It was easy to say "if you're not going to take it seriously, why bother?"

I finished with over 83,000 words that year, making it into the top 20 finishers by word count.

The next year was a little different. The next year, there were 25,000 people participating, and of that 25,000, I wasn't even in the first 5,000. I did finish, but I only wrote 51,000 words. I wasn't as excited about it as I had been the year before, and my lack of excitement was worsened by the fact that I knew that practically everyone on the planet was doing better than I was.

This year, I have decided that my answer to the stiff competition is this: complete denial. I have not even LOOKED at the entire list of authors to see who's doing what. I can see the people in my local group, and some of them are ahead of me and some are behind. And it doesn't matter. This isn't a contest with anyone but myself. This year, I am not going to write until I drop because I know I don't have to. This year, I am not going to obsess about how someone in the world has written more words than I have. I am not going to blame myself if I don't spend every second writing rather than hanging out with my children and my husband. They're what counts. They love me whether or not I'm a novelist.

I guess my tip about checking out the competition boils down to this: don't. Because it doesn't exist. No one can write your story. No one has your voice. Pay attention to what you're doing, sit down and write the words, and you won't need to worry.