NaNoWriMo ~ A Pep Talk

Oct 04, 2011 08:05

So this morning I was reading through the previous years pep talks and I found one by the guy who runs the whole shabang and it made me cry. :) In a good way. Because Chris is right.

How many times have you put your dreams on hold? How many opportunities have slipped through your fingers cause you were too busy, or dare I say it scared?  Too scared to take a chance, too scared to run full steam right off that freaking cliff? But ya know what? Yeah that cliff is really high, and yeah there are big freaking rocks at the bottom and yeah you may fall. But guess what? Maybe, just maybe you will fly.  So today I want to add my pep talk to Chris's and say, take a chance, don't wait. Run off the cliff and spread your wings. And may you have a glorious flight.

December 12, 2008
Wow. We had a feeling this year's NaNo was going to be big. We just didn't
realize it would be this big.

NaNoWriMo 2008 not only marked our largest turnout ever, we also had the
highest percentage of winners we've seen since the year 2000, when I knew
almost all 140 participants personally. Please drop by our blog and help us
puzzle out the whys of this year's winning ways (or celebrate it with a
Winner's shirt from our store!). Whatever magical forces were afoot this
year, we collectively managed to write 1.6 billion words, demolishing last
year's count by nearly 500,000,000 words.

With so much fiction produced, you might mistake National Novel Writing
Month for a novel writing event. But we actually have a sneaky secondary
mission that extends beyond books...and into your career.

(If you're still in school, please print this email out, seal it in an
envelope, and read it on your first day at work.)

Okay. Jobs. Having a job is one of the greatest, trickiest things you can
do as an adult. Employment brings perks like challenges and growth and
(sometimes) money. But the longer you work at a job, the easier it is to
confuse what you are doing with what you can do.

This is true whether you're a dental hygienist, a stay-at-home parent, or
Sirkka-Liisa Anttila, the Forestry Minister of Finland. Because careers
tend to be all about specialization. Human beings, on the other hand,
contain multitudes. Each of us has a wealth of talents spread broadly over
domains both marketable and deliciously impractical. The tricky part is
that we tend to develop the former at the expense of the latter. Passions
become hobbies. Hobbies become something we swear we'll get back to when we
have more time. Or when the kids are grown. Or when the stock market
recovers.

Which means we leave unexplored many of those paths that ultimately make us
feel most alive---the moments of creating, building, playing, and doing
that lead to extraordinary and unexpected things.

Like writing a book.

Or, more loosely, postponing the must-dos of the real world to spend 30
days exploring an attractive, improbable dream.

Giving ourselves that time is so important. Because the world can wait.
It's what the world does best, in fact. It was hanging out for 4.5 billion
years before we arrived, and it'll be waiting around for another few
billion after we're gone.

Our dreams, however, have much shorter shelf-lives.

If there's one thing I've learned from running NaNoWriMo, it's this:
Whatever you think you are, you are more than that. You possess a fearsome
array of skills and abilities, and the most satisfying of these may be
completely unknown to you now. Your curiosity is a dependable guide; follow
it. Put yourself in unfamiliar places. Kindle passions. Savor the raw joy
of making things, and then remake the best of those things until they take
someone's breath away. Wrestle bears.

Actually, skip the bear-wrestling.

But do keep trying big things, okay? Sometimes we can wait so long for a
clear sign that it's time to begin, that the opportunity sails right past
us.

Life is so short. Adventures beckon. Let's get packed and head out on a new
one today.

I think it's time.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

livejournal, nanowrimo, creative writing, life

Previous post Next post
Up