From ultrarunning to ultrawriting

With the 100km race on Saturday and other work to catch up on yesterday, plus some rest, I'd missed 2 1/2 days of working on my NaNoWriMo novel. So it was time to bite the bullet today and do some serious writing, making sure that the inner editor was nowhere in sight. (Please watch this great short video by Lindsey Grant about silencing it.)

Since my novel is about a female ultrarunner doing her longest race yet, I naturally had some additional inspiration after this weekend and managed to write 3,234 words today - ultrawriting you may call it. That brought me back on track to finishing my 50,000 words on time by writing 1,744 words a day for the rest of the month.

However, there are still plenty of days remaining so I am certainly not there yet. I have a feeling that the third week is going to be the most challenging as that is what tends to happen with all big challenges we take on in life - including the 100km I ran on Saturday.

A natural fatigue often sets in once we complete about two thirds of a certain task and we tend to lose sight of how close we are to finishing. But like Saturday, when I struggled after 65km of running with the knowledge I had another 35km to go, we must simply keep moving forward.

By focusing on what's possible right now - whether it's taking one step or writing one word, then  another one and another - we are moving forward and we must keep moving. Before long we'll be surprised how that one step or that one word has led us to accomplishing that monumental goal that seemed so far away not that long ago.

Trust me, that's how I reached the finish line this Saturday and I will certainly remind myself of that every single day when I am working on my first novel manuscript in NaNoWriMo during the remainder of this month. We succeed when we simply refuse to give up.