It is always easier to be ahead than to be behind (except if
you’re looking for motivation for an assignment or homework, in which case it’d
be better if you started early but the motivation itself is easier to obtain
the week before). When you’re succeeding at something, you feel a rush and have
the drive to keep doing it. When you’re behind, it starts to feel like a chore
and it becomes the last thing you want to do because you know how much effort
is involved to just break even again.
For me, it was important to keep ahead of the required word
count in NaNoWriMo. If I had been just on track or had fallen behind, I’d probably
have panicked. That’s why I decided to start on time even though it would have
probably (read definitely) been smarter to wait until after my exams were over.
Because I felt (incorrectly) that I could monitor how much I wrote during exam
period, but I knew that I’d be swamped by the task of catching up after exams
and would stress and probably give up after a weekend of desperate and poor
writing. Which is what happened with NaNoWriMo last year. I started five days
late, didn’t have a plan, wrote about 3000 words of one story idea, had no idea
where to go with it, wrote about the same amount of another story idea, had no
idea where to go with it from there, decided to wait until this year.
It’s like when I got my ears pierced. I’d been considering
doing it for a few days (well, I’d first considered it a few years previously
when I was getting a haircut, but then I saw the thing they used and decided
not to – silly Emi wanted to know that they didn’t need to use a pointy object
when it was obviously the required tool) when I went to a friend’s house with
Mum (our mums are friends, so her mum would organise a get together once every
holidays) sometime early 2011 or late 2010. It just so happened that my friend
had been considering it too and had also decided to do so. We pinky promised
that if one of us got our ears pierced, the other had to too. The idea was that
we could both back out if we really wanted to (and there wasn’t a punishment if
someone failed to do so even when the other person had upheld their end, so the
loopholes were plentiful), but that there was encouragement for both of us. I
went to the chemist the next day to have it done. She would have been nice
about it if she’d had hers done first, but I knew that I wouldn’t have been
able to stand the pressure of knowing that I was obligated to do so. It was
easier for me mentally to know that it was my choice, albeit one that I was
already secured into making, rather than fulfilling a promise. It worked well
for her, too, as we went to the shops near her house when she had hers done and
Mum stayed with her while her mum stood nearby looking away and her sister and
I nervously waited near the perfume bottles.
The same theory applied to NaNoWriMo. I was always ahead, so
I was always happy and able to keep going. If I had fallen behind, I could
technically catch up easily (I’m a fast typist and knew that I wouldn’t have much
on in November after the HSC) but was afraid that my mind might freeze and
refuse to give me the words, especially if I’d started seven days late and had
almost a third of a month to catch up on. So while there’s something special
and inspiring in the story of the underdog who starts fifteen days late, or who
starts on time but is unexpectedly busy in the middle of the project and so
falls drastically behind, and then writes like crazy and manages to finish
50000 words despite the reduced time or other difficult odds, I’ll take being
ahead, keeping a steady lead and being in a positive mental state any day.
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