First, I would like to thank Sonora for asking me to write a guest NaNo pep talk on her blog. “Thank you.”

Now it’s time for me to say a bunch of encouraging stuff while talking about how amazing I am and give you tips from Me, A Real Author. I have an agent and you don’t. Is this encouraging or does it just make you feel like you suck? You feel like you suck? Well, I guess I just wrote the best pep talk ever! Bye.
P.S. You can do it but you’ll never be a real author.
P.P.S. I’m not actually even doing Nanowrimo.

This pep talk was written by Real Author # 7 of 10

I always hated these pep talks. Maybe they never say that exactly, but I always feel like it’s between the lines. First of all, I am 16 1/2 and definitely don’t have an agent. Second, I don’t really consider myself a real author. I consider myself trying really hard. Third, I am actually doing NaNoWriMo this year (I’m a little bit behind).

NaNoWriMo is hard. Different people find it easier than others. But that is because we are all different. Some people win in the first week. Others write several thousand words on the last day and just barely reach the 50,000 word goal. Then, there are the people who win every year (like Sonora) and the people who win some years and not other years (like me). Whichever one of these you are, it’s fine. Honestly.

On NaNo’s Young Writers Program you can set your own goal. When I was on there, that’s what I would do. Usually, I wouldn’t reach my original goal. I would change my goal to match how many words I had written. When I switched to the adult website, I was almost relieved that I wouldn’t have to think about changing my goal. I would either win or lose. It wasn’t flexible. 

That first year, I won. I was so happy, so proud of myself. If I could do that I could do anything. The following year I didn’t have an idea for what to write. I explored several plots, and then at 25,000 words or so I gave up.  Weirdly, I wasn’t irritated with myself when I decided all I wanted was for Christmas to happen, and I really wasn’t going to torture myself by trying to write another 25,000 words. I realise I sound pathetic, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

I’m not saying give up, but it’s okay if you do.

If you actually think about it, writing 1,667 words a day isn’t that hard. And by not hard, I mean it’s not as hard as say eating 1,667 pieces of chocolate a day. Which sounds delightful until you actually think about it.

Let’s say every chocolate bar has 24 pieces.  Some have more, some have fewer, but that’s a good average. 1,667 divided by 24 = 69.5483333… That’s about 69.5 chocolate bars a day, or about 2,085 chocolate bars in a month. Ouch! Imagine trying to buy all that chocolate. The look of the cashier. The state of your teeth at the end of the month. The look on your dentist’s face. Let’s not do that.

Maybe brush your teeth 1,667 times a day instead, except that would probably end up being all you ever do considering that one is supposed to brush their teeth for two minutes each time. Doing so would add up to about 55.56 hours a day. That’s more than twice the number of hours we have in our day. Even if you only brushed your teeth for one minute each time, it would still add to about 27.78 hours a day. Still more than we have. You’d get very behind!

If you lived on Pluto (153.3 hour day), Mercury (1,408 hour day), or Venus (5,832 hour day) it might be an achievable goal. In fact, you would probably have to brush your teeth a lot more than 1,667 times a day on Venus. Too bad none of these planets are inhabitable.

Even though we’ve just proved it unachievable, I would love to see the look on my dentist’s face if I told him I brushed my teeth 1,667 times a day. He would probably be like, “Twice is fine.” Unless I damaged my gums with all that brushing then he might be like “Why did you do that? What are you smoking?” I kind of like the idea of my dentist assuming I’m on drugs.

Okay, so now that we’ve discovered National Chocolate Eating Month (NaChoEatMo) and National Teeth Brushing Month (NaTeeBruMo) are a lot harder, let’s get back to writing. Whether you win or lose, we’ll all keep living after NaNo is over. We’ll still have teeth to brush, and we’ll all still enjoy eating chocolate.

Remember, Yoda was wrong. There is a try, and that’s what really counts.

 

This pep talk (AKA, the best pep talk ever) was written by Sonora’s little sister, Kaleia. If you’re interested in writing a guest post, contact Sonora with your ideas!