On Planning, Scheduling, and Not Giving Up
Welcome to 2021! Has everyone set their writing goals for the year? Do you know what you want to do, your target date, and do you have a plan and a schedule to make it happen? I know, I know, it goes against all ideas of “creativity” to plan and schedule your writing. If you wanted that, you’d go work in a factory. But today I’m going to show you a very good reason to do so.
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.
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?
