I’ve now had this challenge going for 5-1/2 weeks, with nine weeks to go. I’ve blogged about it, but last night, I did something different: for the first time, I called a friend and told her what I was doing.

It could be fairly argued that making that call is no different from telling you, my lovely and supportive blog readers whom I appreciate so much. I think there’s a difference, though. When I write these blog posts, it’s a quick hey, this is what I’m doing. While I’ve known some of you for a very, very long time (looking at you, Kay and Kathleen), most of us haven’t met. It’s unlikely any of you will reach out and hold me accountable. If I drop out of the challenge for some reason, you’re not going to call me and say, “You were doing so well—what happened?” You might wonder why I didn’t make it, but you’re probably not going to text me to ask.

By calling my friend last night, though, I opened a new door. My friend is also a writer, although for her, writing is presently a hobby, not a profession. Still, she understands the idea of committing to this type of challenge, because she’s completed the NaNoWriMo challenge several times (and frankly, I think that’s much harder than what I’m doing).

(Side note for those of you who aren’t familiar with NaNoWriMo: the challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel, start to finish, in 30 days. In order to make it work, the daily word count has to be 1,666. I did it about twelve years ago to try to get myself moving on State v. Claus, but I was so obsessed with the word count that most of what I wrote was schlock. Seriously—I ended up deleting about 98% of it.)

So unlike my wonderful blog readers, my friend is likely to reach out in the future and say, “How’s the challenge going?” If I’ve abandoned it for some reason, she won’t call me a slacker, but she will say something like, “I’m sorry to hear that. Why did you quit?”, and I’ll want to have an answer.

There’s a school of thought that says when you set a goal—stop smoking, lose weight, read In Search of Lost Time—you’re more likely to succeed if you tell people about it. As best I understand it, the idea is that if you tell someone, you’re more likely to stick with it because you’d be embarrassed to admit that you dropped out. I suppose there’s something to that, especially if the people you choose to tell would give you a hard time if you were to drop out. Public humiliation can be a powerful tool.

Fortunately for me, the people I’m entrusting with my challenge are supportive, not harsh. In its way, that raises the stakes: I don’t want to disappoint you all. If I thought you were going to be obnoxious if I failed, I’d be inclined to disregard you, but I know that’s not what will happen.

So I’m going to continue, one day at a time, 1,000 words each day, plus a few more every now and then, just to check in. Many thanks to you all for your support!