Challenge versus Interest

NaNoWriMo – more formally known as National Novel Writing Month, and less formally known as NaNoIThoughtICouldWriMo – wraps up today.  I suppose depending where you live it might not end till it's tomorrow for me, but let's not get picky here.  Once again, I thought I would participate, and once again, I find myself staring at a not-really-that-near-20,000 word manuscript, most of it awful writing.  In other words, I'm about a third done.  This will, I tell myself again, be my last year, and I mean it!

The appeal of NaNo to me is the challenge.  Now I'm not always good at going after challenging things, but "it's hard" is something I've mostly learned to see as a good reason to at least try something, even if I'm not good at actually following through.  One reason I'm not actually good at then doing things is lack of interest.  When it comes to writing, simply as writing, that's something I don't have much interest in.  So every time the choice is between, "Write two thousand words today for a story that barely has a plot or a concept and isn't going at all where it was supposed to," or "Write some other thing on a topic I'm interested in," whether here on the blog, or (mainly) on Team Liquid, or, "Do some other thing that's actually interesting to me for what it is," the choice kept coming down to not-NaNo.  The plain facts are that I'd rather blog about NaNo than actually do it, and most of the time I'd probably rather play a game of chess than do either.

For good or bad, all this failure doesn't really bother me.  I knew going in everything I just said above was true, except maybe I thought I was less not good at doing something every day.  So here I am.  It's not exactly a lack-of-accomplishment to be proud of.  I didn't even learn anything, except that being able to type without looking at the keyboard is impressive to some people.