My second week

So. NaNo. NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writer's Month. It is the trial that all aspiring writers must pass, and the one in which all aspiring writers will ultimately fail. NaNo takes place during the entire month of November, and is a competition to see if a writer can write 50,000 words in the thirty days. At first glance, you may think that 50,000 words is not many at all. I mean, it is only 1,667 words a day which can equate to about 3 to 4 hours of writing. Even with a full time job, a committed person could do that. The hardship doesn't come from writing the words in one day, it comes from writing the words every day (trust me, I know).
This is my first year participating in Nano, and my first week went well. I wrote every day after coming home from work, and was able to top the 1,667 goal by a couple hundred every day. Of course, then came the weekend. All of a sudden I felt myself not wanting to write. I had practically worked continuously for the whole week, and I just wanted a bit of relaxation. And thus began my infamous second week. I wrote very little during my second week, adding a few hundred words here, and a few hundred there. It was difficult to muster up the motivation, and I feared that I would not actually reach the 50,000 goal. I tried to force myself to write, even if the words were meaningless, but this only pushed the work further away. What was I do?
Luckily for me I have friends participating in NaNo as well. And with friends comes competition. I set a challenge to two of my friends, I would surpass their word count by the end of the weekend! I sat down at the computer and found words flowing out of me like they had before. Scenes that I would find boring and difficult to write before now seemed easy to push past. I was enjoying my story once again.
By the end of the weekend I was unable to surpass either of their word counts much to my chagrin, but I had pushed myself to just below the current daily word goal. That was just yesterday, and I still have half a month left, but I am hopeful for the future. I conquered my second week, and next, the whole month!