NaNoWriMo Pace

The official pace for NaNoWriMo is 1667 words per day, to make 50,000 words at the end of 30 days. Well, it's day 10 and I'm averaging more like 347 words per day.

If I plug that into one of the nifty Pacer widgets, it will tell me how many thousands of words I need to write per day to get back on pace.

I'm reminding myself that this is actually a marathon, and guess what, I'm not Tegla Loroupe, a record-shattering marathon runner, who finishes in 2:20:45. I'm just myself, a walker who took eight hours to finish a marathon. I'm not in it for speed, I'm in it for endurance.

Sure, just like that marathon in San Diego, I'm sweating around mile two and really wishing I had trained better and more regularly, and that I hadn't only just recovered from bronchitis. I know that I will still have hours to walk when my girlfriend is hitting the showers to recover from her own race. I know that me and the middle-aged ladies around me will be hustling our bustles to make it to the halfway checkpoint before the cut-off time. (If you're not there by 4:00:00, they turn you back and don't let you finish the race)

So, this is my race, and this is how I'm running (walking) it. And that's fine. I'll still have my novel by the end.

In the meantime, I'd better go iron my shirt for my day job.