National Novel Writing Month is now in its third week. People across the country are spending hours in front of computers, typing away to finish their novels, trying to get to that 50,000-word goal.

When I decided I was going to participate this year, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as I was anticipating my dream of writing a novel finally getting underway. I even wrote an article about the details and my excitement.

When I started, I was doing a really good job at writing the required 1,667 words a day to get to the goal of 50,000 in a month. I was writing and my creativity was flowing. I couldn’t wait to write every day and immerse myself into the world of my novel.

Then the weekend came. I got lazy. The first Sunday, I tried to catch back up. I wrote the 1,600 words, but I was still over 3,000 words behind.

Let me tell you, writing 1,600 words a day is hard, let alone 4,600 to try to catch back up. The Nanowrimo website has a great tool to help you track word count and even tells you your average word count per day to finish by the end of the month, but it is so overwhelming when you get behind.

Week 2 was a joke. I didn’t write at all. I went on a class trip and was away from my novel the whole time.

That brings us to week 3. We’re about halfway through and I have about 7,000 words. Finishing all 50,000 words is going to be hard. I’m going to try to put less stress on myself about the word count and just try to write. I set out to do this to get into the habit of making writing a habit for myself, to build it into my daily routine. It’s hard, but I’m not going to give up. I just have to get back into it one word at a time.