NaNoWriMo: You need a plan part II (Or, It’s a marathon, not a sprint)
Many years ago, before my knees and hips told me that running was not my best form of exercise, I did develop a running practice. I’d always hated running, because I was always the slowest person in any running group, from elementary school on up, but I found I liked competing against myself, to see how I could improve in terms of distance or time. I eventually worked up to a 5K race, but then ended up turning to other forms of exercise that didn’t involve potentially doing damage to already-fragile joints.
NaNoWriMo Preptober Part I
November is National Novel Writing Month – or NaNoWriMo, as it’s usually called. The premise is simple: write a novel in thirty days. Or at least, write 50,000 words of a novel (50K is not novel-length for any but Middle Grade novels). You can formally register at www.nanowrimo.org and get in on all the community aspect of things, which can definitely help during the challenge, because hello, 50K words in one month is more than most people write, myself included. It works out to 1,666 words per day. Which is doable, especially if you are writing fast and focused on just getting words down and not too worried about developing the story. If I’m cruising, I can write about 500 words in a half hour, so this can be done in 1.5-2 hours. Part of the challenge is to keep up that pace every day – including Thanksgiving.
How to Create a Productive DIY Writing Retreat
I recently returned from a self-designed writing retreat during which I finally finished my latest novel. Hooray! I love writing retreats, because they are focused chunks of time when I can work on specific writing goals. I don’t schedule them often enough, actually, but when I do them I find they jump-start my enthusiasm for a project, give a flagging project momentum, or provide a spurt of energy for the final push, as in this time.
Challenge Accepted!
This week I started a 22 Day Pushup Challenge – to do 22 pushups a day for 22 days, to raise awareness of the high suicide rate of combat veterans. (I know there are various estimates of how many average suicides there are per day, but this is the one the challenge uses, so it’s the one I’m going with). Twenty-two pushups is doable for me, although on top of other workouts it can be a little tougher (yesterday, between false starts filming and a workout that already included a bunch of pushups, I ended up doing 98. Today, closer to 50).
The point is, I like challenges. I tend to do my workouts as “challenges” anyway to keep them interesting and keep motivated. I’m not invested in becoming a super-athlete, but challenges are a way of setting goals and working toward them consistently.
The same goes for writing challenges. If the prospect of the blank page is de-motivating, or if your energy on a project is flagging, or you’re in query hell and feeling discouraged, a challenge may be a good way to get out of your slump.
It’s Only Too Late When You’re Dead
Okay, that’s pretty blunt. But lately I have been seeing a number of variations on the theme of “is it too late for me to pursue my dream of writing?”
Is Writing Frivolous Right Now?
I’ve been hearing many writers say they have been too depressed to write, and that with everything going on in the past six months, they can’t even focus on reading a book for pleasure, never mind writing one. And worse, what does it even matter, whether they write or not? Or they worry their subject matter is too frivolous – who really cares about some made up stories when there is so much Really Important stuff going on in the world?
