Postscript: More badges

Postscript: More badges
By Carrie Classon | Contributor | January 2026

You may have heard of National Novel Writing Month. Until earlier this year, it was an official organization called NaNoWriMo, and it had almost 400,000 participants. The goal was to write 50,000 words in the month of November, and people of all ages and from all over the world participated.

But the organization got a little too big to monitor properly. At least one volunteer behaved badly, and the board was slow to act. The organization had no idea how to deal with AI. (If 50,000 words are written by artificial intelligence in 30 seconds, does it count?)

Eventually, the organization closed its doors, and I was one of many participants who were sad because while I write almost every day, it was fun, one month of the year, to know I had lots of company.

Having a big goal can be a lot of fun. Writing 50,000 words in a month means I must write 1,667 words a day. It’s a stretch for most writers, and I loved the feeling that I was surrounded by people as excited about putting words on paper as I am most months of the year.

I was talking to someone about setting goals yesterday. We agreed it was hard for most people to set goals, not because they don’t know what they want, but because they aren’t sure what the first step would look like and, somewhere early on, they get worried that they are headed in the wrong direction.

I think that was what was so fun about NaNoWriMo. There was a graph. There was a big, exciting graph, and when I hit milestones, I earned a badge that everyone could see. Of course, the words might be terrible. But they were counted up and recorded, and I had the badges to prove it!

Not all goals are quite this satisfying. Most goals involve a little dithering. The plan has to be altered. There is a step backward after two steps forward. There are obvious failures when, as optimistic as I try to be, I know I have hit a setback.
Recently, a book I’d written was rejected for publication. I had great hopes that it would be published in the not-too-distant future. It was rejected with a lot of kind words and perhaps even a little reluctance, but it was still rejected, and now I don’t know if that book will ever find a home. This was a disappointment. I don’t earn any badges for this.

But I try, as I always do, to look for the learning in the disappointment. I certainly learned a lot about writing while writing that book. But I try to learn something about the disappointment as well because I’ve noticed that when things are going great and I get one badge after another, I don’t actually learn a whole lot, no matter how fun and motivating it might be.

And I think the lesson in this particular disappointment is rather simple. It’s something I thought I already knew but needed to be reminded of once again.

It doesn’t really matter what I’ve done. All that matters is how I spend today. If I am writing today, then I am doing everything I can to earn more badges in the future.

So, I’ll continue participating in Novel November in whatever form it appears. I’ll be tracking my words and collecting any badges available as if this were the first book I’d ever written because, in truth, it is the only one that matters.

Till next time,
Carrie

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