Day 8: This isn't a Marathon

 “You know watching that word count rise in nice steady intervals is great. It’s nice and neat and even. Exactly the same number of words a day, just how it should be.” Said Natalie

“Yes, it is rather—” Cathy broke off in the middle of her automatic reply. “Wait what? You’ve only been writing 1,667 words a day!”

“Of course, that’s what the recommended word count says to do after all.” This was rather obvious wasn’t it?

“You mean you haven’t done any extra? At all?” Cathy was rather anxious now.

“No, of course not. Why would I want to do that?” Natalie puzzled.

“Because…Because this isn’t a marathon.” Seeing Natalie’s confusion Cathy hurried on, “In a marathon you have a nice measured track to run. You know what to expect and can pace yourself accordingly. But NaNoWriMo isn’t like that at all. You don’t know what to expect during the month, you could get sick or you might get blocked and fall behind in your word count. It’s like racing over a mountain track; you have to run faster when it’s easy and safe so you can slow down when it’s hard or dangerous. If you tried to run at the same pace the whole time you’d never make it through.”

“Um what?” Natalie had never been very good with metaphors.

“You have to write extra words whenever you can so that if something happens you have a buffer zone; that is you have enough extra words to cover a few days so you don’t fall behind.” Cathy explained carefully.

“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that. It would be awful if I fell behind. I know I’d never be able to catch up.” Natalie was close to tears at the thought.

“Falling behind wouldn’t be the end of the world, you could catch up the same way as you’d get ahead, by writing a little extra every day. I’ve had to do it myself a few times, it’s not so hard as you’d think,” Assured Cathy.

“Really? I didn’t know that. Still I think I’d rather be ahead then risk having to catch up.” Decided Natalie

“Yeah, that’s probably a wise choice.” Replied Cathy with a smile

“I will hate to mess up my nice even word count bars though. I suppose it can’t be helped.” Sighed Natalie

— Rita

P.S. I have a few more of these coming up this month; they are a lot of fun to write. The next one is scheduled for the 19th, but If I have time I might write some more between now and then just for the fun of it.