So I failed at this year’s Month of Darkness challenge. I am sitting at my desk at work on November 2nd, looking at my incomplete novel. I mean, technically it’s a novel as it’s over 56K words long, that’s a novel and then some. The problem is, there are still 8 chapters to go. Thousands upon thousands of more words to write, and I stopped on October 23rd’s prompt, though I didn’t even necessarily write it on that day. I’m pretty sure I never actually caught up.
And so, I failed to meet the requirements…
But that’s fine. In fact, it makes me think of that Douglas Adams’ quote: “I love deadlines. I love the sound they make when they fly by.”
Now, deadlines are important. If I was supposed to have this novel done for an editor or for publication, or something like that, I would indeed feel pretty bad. I would probably be writhing from how much of a failure I felt like. How I let others down, how I should have worked harder, been more organized, blah blah blah.
Thing is, this wasn’t for a publisher, this wasn’t something that I needed to publish, and I didn’t let anyone down by not finishing the novel. Especially since, I still plan to finish it. We’re getting close to the end of Nicole’s first book for last year’s Month of Darkness, which means pretty soon I’m going to need to start publishing something else on these blogs. Originally, I wanted to publish the werewolf book (which is about halfway done, though this Vampire one is more than halfway), but I could just publish this novel as the next set of blogs since… well… I’m going to finish it. And Nicole is going to finish hers, and the sun will keep burning, world will keep turning, and life goes on.
I may also fail horribly at my NaNoWriMo plans to do it without them. November is, to me, novel writing month. It is when I’m supposed to take the time to write the novels I want to write. To inspire me to take time to write them. I failed to do that in October, but hey, life happens. Not everything that we want to get done gets done in the time frame we want it all done in. Does that mean we give up doing it? Hell no. We just keep pushing. Even if the time limit was met, we keep working at the dream, because to give up the dream means to let the world win.
Tomorrow is a big day where I am. Election day. A day that many are pushing as the day America’s future gets chosen. I’ve gotten back into teaching after almost two years out of the classroom and need to recreate a lot of my work while teaching kids who are at a crossroads of destiny: do I think for myself or surrender it over to a machine? I enjoyed Halloween watching movies and giving out candy. I went to the Renaissance Faire and took in some shows that I enjoyed.
Life happens and stresses you and takes your time in good ways and bad, and sometimes the thing you see as failure is just failing to meet an arbitrary criterion that you set for yourself to push you to do. Did you do the thing? Not to completion… But did you start? Did you continue? Did you do more than you would have without the criteria? Yes? Then you succeeded.
I didn’t fail to write a novel. I succeeded in writing 56 THOUSAND words. I created a story I otherwise wouldn’t have. I did amazingly well even if I didn’t hit the complete button in a month. And that’s okay.
I have a saying that I use with my students and even my friends, “Sometimes good enough is good enough.” This doesn’t mean that you should lower your standards or accept mediocrity, but it does mean that killing yourself in the pursuit of perfection isn’t noble. It’s self destruction.
You should brush your teeth for two minutes a day. So is it better to brush for thirty seconds, or not at all?
You should drink eight cups of water a day. So is it better to drink two glasses or none at all?
You should eat two to three cups of vegetables a day. So is it better to eat a handful or none at all?
To do a little when you only have a little to give means a whole lot more than giving one hundred percent and being too burned out to give anything the next day. So, did I fail? Yes. Am I a failure? No. And while this blog came out later than I would have liked, it still sends the message that I wanted to send. Sometimes you will fail, and that’s okay. Better than okay, sometimes that’s good, since failure teaches you more about everything than success does. While tomorrow is never a given, it is still better to assume we have time to finish our projects refreshed tomorrow, then destroy ourselves over perfection we’d never get to appreciate anyway.
