Keep Focused on Your Own Goals

One of the things I have learned from triathlon is that you have to stay focused on your own goals. It can be so tempting when you get into the water and the gun goes off for the swim start to think that if you don’t keep up with the crowd, you’re going to lose the race. It can be easy when you go out on a training ride with friends to think that if you get dropped and don’t kill yourself to keep up, you’re a loser.

In fact, exactly the opposite is true. I am a strong swimmer. I have been swimming for over thirty years. I still get nervous in the water, mostly because other people who are swimming around me are CRAZY. Seriously, they have no idea what they are doing. They think that going all out for the first 200 meters of the race means something. It doesn’t. A triathlon, even a sprint, is a long race. Olympic distance, Half Ironman, and Ironman are a lot longer than that. Using up all your energy in the first two minutes of a race is just stupid. It means you have no sense of discipline and that you don’t understand the distance you are in.

I have started to hang back in swim starts, not because I have no confidence, but because I want to let all the crazy people go ahead of me and get their craziness out before I come along on the second lap and pass every single one of them gasping out their last breaths as they struggle with the last 500 meters of the race. I am in it for the long haul. I am racing through every minute of the race. I race smart and I race steady. If I have a bunch of gas left, I can use it in the last mile or two of the run, when all those crazy people are walking. Or haven’t gotten off their bikes yet.

The same thing is true about writing, and particularly around this time of year with NaNoWriMo. Look, NaNo is a great way to get excited about a project you’ve had on hold for a while. Just remember, don’t start comparing the word counts that other people are handing in on the first week of the month with your word counts. You’re in it for the long haul, right? You don’t want to get some prize for speed and then realize that you’ve gone off the wrong way somewhere and you give up because you can’t figure out how to fix it.

Go at the pace that feels right to you. Sure, push yourself. But don’t push so hard that you end up hating the book. And don’t push so hard that you realize that you have no idea what to write the next day. Keep something in the tank. And if you don’t finish the book by the end of November, no big deal. You’re not in a competition to write the most words. Anyone could do that by typing a dictionary.

The real competition here is to write words that matter. Write a whole book the way it deserves to be written. Write your book your way. And however those other people are writing their books, good for them. Maybe they’ll get through it and maybe they won’t. Use the competition if it helps you, but don’t be distracted by it. Maybe getting dropped by everyone else is exactly what you need for this book. Maybe spending a few weeks just thinking and not writing words is what you need. It’s all right. You’re doing fine.