NANOWRIMO DAY EIGHT: BY THE NUMBERS

shopoholic309 asks: I only have 1000 words written for NANO. Problem? Should I give up already?

Give up? GIVE UP? On the 8th of November? When you have 22 days to go?

Think about it this way: so, you have 49,000 words left to write. Originally, you had to write approximately 1,666.6 words a day. Now you have to write 2,227.2 words a day. Which is a difference of just 560.6 words a day. 560.6 words? That’s, like, a sentence! Okay, it’s like a paragraph. Maybe a page. Okay, it’s like a blog answer. I will MAKE this answer 560.6 words long to show you that it is not a big deal to do that many extra words a day. At the moment, I’m at 109 words. Well, 109 was actually the 110th word. And just telling you that has gotten me up to 128 words! Which is about one-quarter of the way! See how this just zips along?

I mean, maybe you’re thinking of when you get an essay assignment and it’s like, “Write 3000 words on which kind of wood is best for eating.” And you’re like, “Oh my god, how am I am going to write 3,000 words?” Because the task already seems hard (the answer, by the way, is balsa—and also whatever my bed was made out of when I was little because I used to crawl out every night and chew on the footboard) . . . when you add a NUMBER to it, it just makes it seem scarier. But numbers, like guns, cannot hurt you. Numbers don’t kill people—math kills people.

Speaking of Numbers . . . have you ever seen that show Numb3rs? Which they actually spell with a 3? In that show, numbers can solve crime. Like, any crime. You can just feel how that show was pitched: “Okay, so, it’s an FBI show . . . but, like, the one agent? Has this brother? Who’s like, a crazy MATH GENIUS? And the FBI guy pulls in his brother and then EVERY WEEK there’s, like, a MATH PROBLEM at the center of the show? And then all of these genius professors will, like, explain math? And we’ll run some mathy graphics in the background so it all seems legit. It’ll be like CSI, but for nerds. Nerds and shut ins.”



The graphics are almost certainly meaningless, but no one cares.

Numb3rs is not a very good show, but it is an example of how numbers can be our friends. And also how we can use numbers in our spelling. For example, I could start spelling my name “Maur33n Johns7.” I won’t, but I could. By the way, I am counting that caption in the word count, which is now 443—which INCLUDES the number 443, which is a real number and not my attempt to spell a word with numbers. (Or numb3rs.)

My point, shopaholic309 (it’s like you KNEW I was going to start spelling names with numbers!) is that you definitely can’t give up before you even start, and you can’t let a little thing like 560.6 words get in the way of your DREAMS. If you want to write, don’t let yourself be scared off. There are a million excuses to make to keep from sitting down and writing. A big part of the battle is just ignoring those things and getting down to business. Don’t let a little thing like 560.6 words get in your wa . . .