(No time to read this? There’s a video/audio version here.)

Wishing You Luck (Photo credit: akahodag)

“Best of luck with your novel!”

“Good luck with NaNoWriMo this year!”

“Sorry you didn’t win last year but hopefully you’ll have better luck this year.”

This is me over and over again as we edge ever closer to November. It seems like every conversation I have about NaNoWriMo ends with me wishing someone luck with their novel.

Not anymore.

It’s not because I don’t want you to succeed. It’s actually because of the exact opposite reason. I want more than anything for you to succeed, to realize your dream and finally get your novel finished. I want this to be the year that you cross the finish line marked by The End, the year you put this book to bed whether this is your first novel or thirtieth. I want you to finish your novel this month.

But you don’t need luck for that.

You need your butt in the chair, your fingers on the keyboard, your hand on the pen.

You need to make sacrifices to find the time to get it done, push past your excuses and your hang-ups, and get those words down on the page no matter what obstacles life throws up between now and the deadline.

There are going to be times when writing your novel will be Not Fun and every word is like pulling a tooth out with your toes. There are going to be times when writing your novel is so much fun the words flow out faster than you can type them and you wonder why you need the whole month to write this thing, you could finish it in a day at this rate.

Sometimes every word you write will feel like spun gold. Sometimes you will only write awful prose and be convinced you are a total failure.

Your plot will fall hopelessly apart. Your plot will come together magically in a way even you never even saw coming.

You will love your novel and then hate it from minute to minute like some kind of Gaga-ian Bad Romance.

All of this will happen, again and again, this endless cycle of low and highs that is writing. And all of this and more stands between you and The End.

You need to realize that this is what writing anything is like, not just a novel, not just during NaNoWriMo. You need to motivate yourself to work on your novel when you don’t feel like it, when you feel like what you’re writing sucks, and when you’d rather be slacking off. You need to hit the point when you want to quit  and just keep on writing anyway because that is what it takes to finish a whole book. You need to write long past when you want to because you have to, not just to finish the book but to set the story inside you free.

Luck isn’t going to do you a darn bit of good for any of that. Hard work, determination, good old stubbornness. Those all might help.

What it comes down to is, when you finally finish your book, that will be something YOU accomplished, not luck. You with your fingers aching from so much typing, your eyes bleary from sacrificing sleep to write, your mouth stretched into a joyous smile because you did it, you finally finished the freaking thing. Every word you write is the result of your efforts and you deserve all the credit for that… not some magic helper. Not luck.

If you’re taking on NaNoWriMo this year, I don’t wish you luck. You don’t need it.

You’ve got this.