NaNoWriMo Update
November 16th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Well we’re at the halfway mark and I have to say this is way more difficult than I anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that it was going to be hard, but this…this is hard.
So far, I have managed to scrape together about 6,000 words, which puts me pretty dang far behind. I’m having a couple of problems:
1) Turning off the internal editor/critic.
2) Finding time to write.
3) Staying motivated.
First and foremost is the problem of ol’ Dick. (Go read this post to find out more about my internal critic.) Forcing myself to just write without worrying about whether it makes sense, forms a good story, and is any good is damn near impossible. I know that the idea is to just allow yourself the freedom to write, but in many ways that freedom can be paralyzing. I will write something out and Dick will want to edit it and change it and fix it until it’s perfect. But I can’t stop for that. But he won’t let up. So my mind gets locked in this internal battle and I end up just getting frustrated and I stop writing altogether.
I am also finding it extremely difficult some days to find a solid chunk of time to sit down and actually write anything. I work long days, and often don’t get home until midnight or later, and I’ll be honest, the last thing I’ll want to do is sit down at the computer and write. When I get home I want to unwind. Have some dinner, watch tv, talk with my wife for a little while (if she’s managed to stay awake past 10:30). Or, all I will want to do is go to sleep. I’ll give myself excuses like “Oh well, it will be better for my health and well being if I just go to bed.” Or sometimes I’ll try to play the fence and say, “I’ll just lie down for an hour, and then I’ll get up and write.” That always ends up with me waking up at 8:00 am with a backache and severe regret about not writing the night before.
Both the previous problems, turning off my internal editor/critic and finding time to write contribute significantly to my third problem: staying motivated. The further I get into this challenge the less it feels like I will be able to accomplish 50,000 words in 30 days. And the less I feel like I can accomplish it, the less I want to do it. Last week at one of the NaNoWriMo writing group meet-ups I overheard a couple other NaNo’s talking about their word counts. They were bemoaning the fact that they didn’t feel like they were going to be able to accomplish their goals and that they would have to end up cramming most of their writing in at the end.
At first this made me feel much better about myself because clearly other people were struggling to make the 50k mark. But no. These people had already hit the 50k mark. They were worried about getting to 100k. One girl was talking about how she made 50k in the first week, but she didn’t feel like she’d ever make it to 200k. I packed up my laptop right then and there and went home. And for the next three days didn’t write a single thing.
These are my reasons for why I’m not further along. And while I imagine they are pretty common, it sure feels like I’m the only one two weeks in and stuck at 6k words.
So, should I just give up? Do I admit defeat? Should I pack up my laptop and go home?
If I was trying to do this project a year ago, I probably would have given up. And I probably would have given up on the third day.
But now? No. I’m not giving up. It’s difficult, sometimes almost impossible to stay motivated, but you know what keeps me going? There isn’t one secret thing that I turn to every time I need motivation and inspiration. I have to make the choice every single day to keep going. But while there isn’t one secret thing that fires me up, there are a number of smaller things that keep my motivation warm.
First, I want to be a writer. I want to move from amateur to professional. I want to be able to make a living at this. So that keeps me motivated. Also, I really like writing. Regardless of how good my stuff is or who I’m writing for/to, I really enjoy writing. It’s fun! And finally, the biggest motivating factor is my wife. That woman is amazing, and is absolutely my biggest cheerleader. The fact that she’s willing to put up with my melodramatic moments and my ‘this is crap, it’s all crap, it will never be anything more than crap’ and yet still manages to encourage me, well, that motivates me. If she can still believe in me despite all my nonsense, well, maybe I really can do it.
And yes, it’s hard to find time. Anything that is worth doing takes a significant amount of time, and any skill that needs to be learned will take years to master. But those skills can only be mastered if they are practiced regularly. So I have to make the choice. If this is really what I want to be doing with my life, then I have to make the choice to prioritize my writing time above other things like ‘winding down time’ or ‘sleep’. I have no delusions about it being easy, but I do know that if I want to move away from amateur hour then I have to practice. Every day. No excuses.
To that end I have decided that at a minimum I am going to write for one hour every day. Fifteen minutes will be devoted to a Write-or-Die style writing prompt (I’ll explain that in a later post). The other forty-five minutes will be devoted to NaNoWriMo. Once November is over I’ll readjust how I divide up that hour, but for now that’s what I’m going with. And an hour is just the minimum. If I’m really going to hit that 50k mark I’ll have to devote a lot more time to it.
As far as Dick goes…well, I still don’t have any satisfactory solutions on how to turn him off aside from just writing every single day, and consciously choosing to turn the editor off for now and just write.
So that’s what I’ll do. Just write.
[Insert clever sign off phrase here]
This is going to sound totally cheeseball, but I think regardless of whether or not you reach the 50K mark, you’re already accomplishing something worth plenty of accolades: sticking with it. Go you!