Why Overachieving is Awesome

For those who don't follow me all over the internet, I'm not dead. I'm just in the middle of National Novel Writing Month.

I've stumbled across haters early on this year, some of them particularly more frightening than others (I'm looking at you, dude who has sent me legitimate hate mail through the USPS. Yeah. The cops know about you, by the way, you creepy motherfucker). This is almost on par with last year, when some people decided the appropriate reaction to "Oh, I can't write that many words in a month" was to tell me to kill myself.
What the actual fuck, you guys.

I have some important things to say in regards to all of you.

• My word goal is not your word goal. I do not expect you to chase the Million. I don't expect *me* to chase the Million. It is not for everyone. I am not trying to invalidate your words, nor am I trying to make you feel bad about not writing more. My goal is in no way whatsoever related to yours. Telling me to write less so you don't feel inadequate is not ok by any standards. Telling me to slow down because I'm writing too fast is not ok. Telling me I should do anything to make you feel better about your goal/pace/wordcount other than asking for encouragement is not fucking ok.
• You have absolutely no right to try to make me feel bad about needing to challenge myself to more than 50k in a month. NaNo is one of the best challenges I get in the year because it makes me churn out those longer stories, the ones that only writing 50k would barely make a dent in the plot.
• You have no right to tell me I don't need the inspiration NaNo provides. If I didn't need the inspiration NaNo gives me, why the fuck do I come back to this every year? If I don't need the inspiration, why am I not published already? Why am I not doing bigger and better things? It's because I need this month just as much as you do. I need a month to forget about everything else in my life and WRITE.
• You have no right to make me feel like less of a human being just because you don't understand why I would want to write more than 50k in 30 days. By extension, you have no right to make ANYONE feel like less of a human being because you don't understand the "why".
• You have no right to try to play off a blatant bit of hatred with a "lol, just kidding". It is hateful, it is hurtful, and we have feelings, too. One negative comment is enough to undo literal hundreds of positive comments from other people. I try very hard to support everyone, whether you manage to write five words or five hundred thousand words. I try hard to not make you feel bad about your word count, and I try hard to not make you feel bad if you're behind your pace goal. Right now, I'm catching up for the 11k behind my pace goal I happen to be, and when you point out that my pace goal is more than you can write in three weeks, express hate, and pass it off with a "just kidding", it fucking hurts. I am legitimately afraid to post in threads other than the two main OA threads because people keep posting "I hate you all lol jk jk" messages. I don't snap back with, "haha, you suck because you only have two thousand words I'm kidding just joking haha it was a joke". If I did, you would be pissed. I should not be afraid to post anywhere. I should not be afraid to ask for help in a genre lounge, or introduce myself to the other 20somethings. I am tired of the thinly-masked hate, I am tired of the blatant hate, I'm tired of the people who think we don't have feelings, and you have no right at all to do this to us.
  
• Your word goal is just as impressive as mine. Writing 50k in a month is an awesome achievement, and I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. Six years ago, if you'd asked me to write 50k in a month, I would've thought you were absolutely fucking insane. We are all overachievers. We're all doing something awesome this month. Just because my wordcount is higher doesn't mean I'm doing any better than you are; I have the exact same struggles to find time, figure out my plot, and make my characters more than two-dimensional.

Now, some of the awesome things about overachieving.

• I have met more insanely awesome people than I ever imagined through the OA thread this year. They're a support community, there when everything falls to shit (which it has several times this month alone), and they never make me feel unwelcome, whether they're aiming for 55k or the Million alongside me.

• I know more people through the OA thread and chat who are genuinely happy when I hit my next goal that it almost (almost) makes up for the people who feel nothing but irrational hatred. I love that we are all cheerleaders for everyone, that we all support each other, and we can have friendly wars with each other and not worry about who wins or is better or any such thing, because we've long since accepted that most of us have different writing speeds and pace goals.
• These people support me no matter what. If I manage to write a single word. or write 70k in a day, or if I finally get to spend a night with my husband, or if I finally get a freaking night off work, my fellow OAers are there to celebrate with me. When my grandfather passed away on Tuesday, the OA thread was the first group of people to know because they understand what it's like to be in the middle of an insane story at an insane pace and not want to write a single fucking word. They're every ounce of inspiration I need exactly when I need it, and they're the comfort I need when I'm wondering just why the hell I do this every year.

I spend more energy than is really healthy or relevant to my actual life cleaning up drama, be it from other OAers (that's right, we're not fucking perfect), the people in my daily life, or the people I'm forced to interact with because they don't understand why I do things the way I do.

I do not have time to answer your questions about my word count. I do not have time to respond to every person who pops up with a "You know you're not supposed to count words written before November, right?" question. I do not have time to deal with you and your distractions from your own novels, and if I could turn off NaNoMail from non-approved people, I would. I don't ask you about your word count, so why the fuck do you think you can ask me about mine? Am I constantly prodding you, asking if those words you have were legitimately written in November?
No.
I'm not.
And even if you had brought some over, would I care?
No.
It's none of my fucking business what you do.
Stop thinking what I do is your business.



Now, for the love of everything that's holy, can we knock it off with the fucking drama and get back to the writing?