WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I thought I'd keep going for Nano ths year, for a couple of reasons. First, I saw the one badge that you get for writing for thirty consecutive days, and I've never gotten that one before because I try to finish early. The second reason is that I want to try to focus on writing a little bit daily, rather than trying rack up big word counts on one day so I can slack off the next. I'm not going to push for any particular goal, although 60k would be nice.

Actually, I forgot I had a third reason: I wrote a scene a little too far ahead of the others, so I'd like to fill in the space in between before 11/30, if I can. That's kind of dumb, but I managed to pull that off last year when I did Luffa #70-81. This time I got like #101-109, plus some pieces of #111 and 112. It shouldn't matter, but if I can use it as motivation, I'll take it.

I am really, really sick of writing.

I decided to push on and keep writing after I hit 50k on Day 18. My only real goal for the overrun was to update my word count for thirty straight days, and maybe hit 60k before the end of the month. I think I'll be able to pull it off, but I am not having a fun time.

To put it another way, I've got just 1,818 words to go. That should be a day's work, at most. I've got three days to make that happen, and really, I have to spread that out across three days, or I won't get my nifty 30-days-in-a-row badge. This should be easy, and it would have been two weeks ago, but now it feels like pulling teeth.

Also, the overrun thing really messes with my sense of motivation. I don't really have to do any of this, and yet I do. I can't work ahead because I have to write each day, but I also can't just slack off, because I want the 60k. It feels a lot like burn out, and I don't think I actually am burned out, but it's hard to tell.

The words are getting written down, but I feel really indecisive about things. I went to bed early last night so I could wake up early and write before work, and then I barely got any writing done. I was too wound up about a scene, trying to figure out how it should go, what everyone should look like, whether or not certain information should already be revealed. Naturally, I had to ponder whether I should just scrap the scene and start over.

That's the one great strength of using word count for motivation, though. It teaches you to keep everything. There's no way in hell I'm going to throw out anything I've written since 11/19, because I absolutely refuse to give up any of the ground I've gained towards 60k. This may be the hardest 9800 words I've ever written, but they're going in the damn fic. I don't care what happens.

deewwwwww it

Okay, but if Andy Weir or Nanwrimo.com comes after me, it’s all your fault.

One of the most common questions a writer gets asked is, “Do you have any tips on writing?” Unfortunately, that’s a very broad question. It’s like asking a mechanic, “Do you have any tips on fixing cars?” It’s their whole job and it took a long time for them to learn it. It’s hard to impart any useful information quickly.

But I will say this: The key is keeping your motivation up. You have to actually sit down and put words into your word processor. And, usually, that’s not fun. It’s hard work. So how do you keep yourself coming back to that document day after day?

First off, you have to accept that you’re not going to be blazing away in a creative euphoria all the time. In fact, you’ll almost never be in that state. Usually, it’s a slog. So make your peace with the fact that it is a slog, but that you’re working toward a goal. Writing isn’t like playing music, where the act itself is rewarding. It’s more like gardening, where the work is hard and unpleasant, but the result is beautiful.

Next, you have to accept that your story will change as you write it. Something that’s perfect and awesome in your mind will often be stupid when you write it down. This is not a failure on your part, and it doesn’t mean you suck. It means you’re a writer, and you have begun phase one of making your story better. The moment you try to put things into words is when you find all the problems. That’s natural and normal, and every writer faces it.

And then there’s “flow.” Sometimes, when you’re writing, things come together easily and you can crank out 2,000 words in an afternoon. But other times, it’s torture just to crap out 300 words. In those rough patches, here’s something to keep yourself going: When you read the pages later, you won’t be able to tell which ones you wrote with good flow and which ones were hard. You’re creating the same quality of work in both cases. You might not believe me, but the next time it happens to you, check the results later. You’ll see for yourself. So when you’re having a rough patch, it helps to remember that you’re making progress toward a goal. The words you’re putting down aren’t wasted. They’re just as good as the rest.

And, finally, I have this advice: Resist the urge to tell friends and family your story. I know it’s hard because you want to talk about it and they’re (sometimes) interested in hearing about it. But writers have a dirty little secret: We are mainly motivated by our desire for people to experience our stories. We want an audience. We need it.

Telling your story to friends verbally satisfies that need for an audience, and it diminishes your motivation to actually write it. So make a rule: The only way for anyone to ever hear about your stories is to read them. You can still give it to them chapter by chapter—so you get the sweet, sweet external validation that you crave during the process. But no telling the story outside the pages.

If you do that, you’ll at least finish the book.

The goal for today is to hit 39,000 before I have to go back to work.    If I pull that off, my endgame looks like this:

Wed. 11/14: 1,667 words

Thurs. 11/15: 1,667 words

Fri. 11/16: 1,667 words

Sat. 11/17: 3,000 words

Sun. 11/18: 3,000 words (finish line)

Worse comes to worst, I might have to write a little extra on the 19th and 20th to wrap things up.   That would be irritating, but doable.  I’d prefer to spend that time editing or posting chapters.   Alternately, I could just just kick my own ass over the weekend, and try to do some 5 or 6k sprint, but I don’t want to count on that idea. 

I feel like the best advice I can give to anyone who wants to try this is to see how long it takes for them to write smaller chunks of text.    “1667″ is a number you see a lot on Nano’s website, because it’s 1/30th of 50,000.   If it takes you three or four days to write 1500 words, then you’re going to have trouble hitting the NaNoWriMo goal, because you won’t be able to meet that minimum daily goal.    If you can write 1,667 in a single afternoon, that’s more encouraging, but now you have to ask yourself if you can do that for thirty days in a row.  

For me, the answer to that question is “hell no.”    I can write bigger word counts in a single day, but I absolutely would *not* want to write 1667 words a day, every day, for a whole month.    I want to work ahead so I can slack off later.   So in my case, the question becomes more like “Can I write 3000 words in one day, for multiple days?”   The answer seems to be “yes”, which means I can work ahead, fall behind a little, and work ahead some more to finish.   

So I think that would be the first step to preparing yourself to try this.   Write something small and see how long it takes to hit 3000 words.    Then see if you can do it again some time.   If you can write a 12500-word thing in a week’s time, then you can go into Nano with some confidence, because you’ll just have to do that same workload again four times.

Maybe that’s the appeal for me with this stuff.   The numbers help me stay motivated.    Andy Weir compared writing to tending a garden, where you don’t really get the reward until much later.    The stuff I’m writing now may not be seen by anyone for weeks, and I may not get feedback on it for some time after that.   The numbers are instant gratification, though.   “Hey, I pulled down 1,559 words on Day 13, and I need to write 2,388 more before I go to bed, but I think that’s pretty doable, so I’ll horse around on tumblr for a while.”   When this is over, I can look at the chart, and visualize my progress for the month, and take some satisfaction in it.   Maybe I can’t eat the vegetables yet, but I can admire the rows of crops I planted.  

Last week, I want to say Day 5, I went to bed feeling, really, really pleased with myself, because I was on vacation, and I’d done nothing but write and clean my bathroom.   I don’t know if that makes me a lunatic or a man of few wants, but I’m willing to live with the mystery.   Days 7-9, I felt like crap, and I think that’s because I got a flu shot on Day 6, and those always take a toll on me for a couple of days.    Note to self: Get the flu shot in October.   

Last night, I had one of those “What am I doing with my life?” moments.   I try to ignore those, because they always sort of show up no matter what I happen to be doing at any given time.    It still kind of bummed me out.    About an hour ago, I went to the apartment office and renewed my lease, and for some reason I feel pretty jazzed up about that.    It just feels good to get things done, I suppose.   Maybe part of it is that I can write this super-long story and still find time to take care of day-to-day business.   There’s other things I want to do, but I can make time for them.   It’s not an either/or proposition.    But I can blow a whole day on writing and enjoy it.  That’s okay too.  

I’m feeling pretty good about my progress this year.    One thing I found very helpful from a motivation standpoint is that nanowrimo.org still has my stats from 2017, so I can compare my 2018 progress with last year’s performance.     That’s great for morale, because even though I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted, I’m still about 1,700 words ahead of where I was on Day 3 of last year. 

My strategy with this thing is to try to rack up a strong word count early, because I’ll be really dragging by the end.   I managed to finish by Day 20 last time, which was great, but I remember really struggling to get across the finish line, mostly because I was tired of writing and I knew I had plenty of time left to procrastinate and still win.    Week Three is probably a real bad place for me to be for that reason.    The more I can get done in Week One and Week Two, the better off I’ll be.   Because I do not want to end up having to play catch up in Week Four.   I might be capable of knocking out 20,000 words in the final days of November, but I’d hate every second of it.   Actually, I think if I had to break it down, it’d look like this:

Week 1: High spirits, strong motivation.    

Week 2: Motivation starts to cool off, but still making decent progress.   I don’t want to slow down because I know how much it’ll suck to fall behind late into the month.

Week 3: Death.   By now I’m sick of writing and tempted to cut my output in half because I still have a week to go.  

Week 4: Nutty Honey Cocoa Death.   If I end up here, I’m tempted to give up completely, because the effort of meeting the deadline isn’t worth writing after a month of trying to write.

So the key here is not to slow down too much in the early going.   Last year, I wrote zero words on Day 4, because my niece was doing a swim meet that weekend and I decided I was far enough along that I could take a day off.   Fair enough, but in hindsight, the meet was over by noon, and I should have at least wrote something that day, if only to chip away at the goal.   Writing 1000 words on Day 4 is way easier than writing 1000 words on Day 17.     My goal should really be to keep writing for two weeks straight, no matter how much, just because those days are more productive.   The breather needs to be  somewhere in Week Three.   Just step back and plot things out so I’m not just writing aimlessly.  

I’m the best

A-ROUUUND

Nothin’s gonna ever keep me down

I’m the best

AROUND