I'm about 70% of the way through the month and 71% of the way to 50,000 words. I've been able to cover enough ground in the past few days to make up for pretty sparse output before that (especially last week, when my focus was almost entirely on work because of our quarterly pledge drive). Based on my blog entries, I've only missed 3 days of writing in the first 21, meaning I'm averaging six days a week of writing. That seems pretty good to me.

I'm enormously disciplined about my job, but I tend to be sloppy about a lot of other things. One thing I often find myself doing is starting something new, going strong for a while, and then starting to lose steam after a few months. I have a bunch of unfinished home improvement projects and hobby stuff around the house as proof. Having a deadline and sticking to it has helped to focus my attention on getting it done rather than striving for perfection at every point along the way. One of the recurring themes in the NaNoWriMo pep talks (via emails and articles) is that a first draft is by nature kind of raw and flawed. The whole point of a first draft is to have something to edit into a second draft. Without actually finishing the book, you don't have a starting place for refining (or rewriting) it. I tend to worry too much about getting things perfectly the first time. The irony is that nothing I now do well came to me by using a process anywhere near what I so often apply to a range of things in my life.

My radio skills came through years of very hard work and no small amount of failure. I can recall at least two shots at live radio that were abysmally bad; I was so nervous training for weekend shifts at a small radio station in Washington State that I lost the job (even though I'd already done live work at two other radio stations) before it even started. I wanted the job so badly I psyched myself out of it. I eventually got a job at another station in town as Production Director. A few months later they put me in morning drive; that experiment lasted two days (again, because I was so nervous). My next job (at a major Seattle rado station) lasted for two years; I was let go because the Program Director felt I didn't have what it took to earn a permanent spot on the on-air roster. I was stupid enough to find another on-air radio gig (and I guess they were stupid enough to hire me), and 16 years after that last firing, I'm still on the air every day, talking to more people than at any other point in my career.

All I'm saying is, that doesn't really appear to be a clear path to success, but it really is. You have to want it badly enough that you're willing to work for it, and you're willing to keep showing up even when they don't want you to. Having some degree of talent doesn't hurt, of course; but as a programmer, I would always take a less talented person with drive over an immensely talented person with sloppy work habits. It's the tortoise/hare thing; the disciplined person who has a good strategy and works it will end up surpassing the one who's trying to get by on charisma and connections.

So, just finishing this novel (and I'm determined to do it) puts me way ahead of any point in the last 20 years when I told myself I wanted to write a book, and then proceeded not to. I still honestly don't know if I'll try to revise this into something resembling an actual, finished novel (I'm still guessing I won't), but it's sure given me a lot of insights into my own creative process, my own output ability (and doing it during a pledge drive month has certainly helped me to get a realistic gauge on that aspect of things). It's a great reminder to me that the most powerful secret to succes in anything is just showing up--not once, but over and over.

A few years ago I ran across a quote (it was on a calendar, and I haven't been able to find a source for it) that has become something of a life motto for me: One thing that keeps a lot of people from being a success is work.