For those of you sitting on pins and needles wondering if I was going to make my 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo, it is now official: I failed. I have good excuses for this--I became more involved in publicity for World Leader Pretend; I went off with the wife for a much needed work-free weekend; my mother-in-law is in town--but mostly I just failed.

This won't, however, deter me from setting lofty goals in the future. I find that I have about a 10% return on lofty goals, and the only way to get to that 10%, is to fail 9 times first. For example, when I'm quitting smoking, I have to quit for about nine days in a row, before the accumulated horror of prematurely shortening my life sinks into my brain long enough for me to actually run the cigarettes under the faucet. (And not go out two hours later and buy more...)

Most people do not seem to operate this way. If they don't succeed the first time, it gets progressively harder for them to succeed. For me, though, the sheer volume of failures has given me confidence. I am actually happy that I've failed, because today, I can make a new goal, and because I fucked up the last one, I'm much more likely to accomplish it this time around.

I never thought I'd say this, but maybe Nietzsche was right.

Labels: Writing Process