Month: November 2019

I officially “won” NaNoWriMo as of writing this post on November 23.

Continue reading “Won and Done?”

As I mentioned last week, I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month. As of writing this blog post I’ve reached 37,000 words in my novel, which I’m quite happy about. I found the first week or so pretty easy to manage, and I consistently went above the official daily word goal.

The last week has been a bit tougher. I set a personal daily goal of 2000 words, and I have managed to hit it every day so far. But it’s been tough at times. Many nights I’ll have only written 800 words or so, and think about just calling it for the day since I’m ahead of the official mark. But part of this month is being disciplined on my own; the official goals aren’t that meaningful, they are just a guide. I want to do this with internal motivation, that’s the real challenge.

One trick, or probably more of a strange placebo, that I have found works is using an app like Forest (or really, just some count-down timer) to do what cool writers call “word sprints”. I’ve found fifteen minutes is the sweet spot for me. I get locked into trying to write as much as I can in fifteen minutes, which is really the length of a YouTube video that’s a bit longer than average. It’s a unit of time I can easily wrap my head around. And in each sprint I tend to get at least 500 words. I then take a short break, and repeat again. I’m not sure why it works, but it doesn’t leave me feeling burned out; I tend to feel more energized in my writing after accomplishing one.

I don’t have much else to say (I’m in the middle of one of those days where I’m at about 1200 words and it’s 9:30 pm) except try playing around with ideas for avoiding burnout. I find that setting up systems to avoid short-term fatigue can be incredibly beneficial in staving off long-term issues as well.

November is National Novel Writing Month, referred to as NaNoWriMo by the cool kids. The official goal of the event is to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel. More loosely, it’s to write 50,000 of some novel (perhaps you’re finishing last year’s, or revising your current one.) Or if you’re not in the novel game, maybe just write 50,000 words. Or write a graphic novel with some constraint. In reality, it’s an event designed to get people writing and to build the habit of writing every day. The word goal is just to encourage you to silence your inner editor for a while, and let your brain throw crap on paper.

That’s exactly what I’m doing. You can keep track of my progress by going to the NaNoWriMo page (linked in the sidebar menu). There you will find a PDF of my work updated each night. I don’t have any cool live word-counter (the updates on the website require you to have an account to view), but I suppose if you really cared you could copy and paste from the PDF and check.

As of writing this post (the evening of 11/9) I’m at around 20,500 words, which is a bit ahead of pace. I’m aiming to be done around November 20 if possible, to avoid needing to do anything while traveling around Thanksgiving. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have at least another 2,000 words by the time this is posted on Monday morning, and maybe even be halfway done by Monday night.

I’m sure this is not something most people are interested in, but it can be good to have an excuse to let your creativity flow a bit more than you may allow it to, or may allow time to. For me, I’m spending most of my free time that I would normally spend on podcasts or other media just writing. It’s been fun so far, and I hope to keep up the pace.