Seven days until NaNoWriMo begins. I’m a little nervous. I have done a great job so far of writing daily. Today is my 65th day of posting at least 500 words every single day, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. I have a habit now, a habit of writing. The practice and the urge to keep the streak going works much, much better than waiting for inspiration or motivation to strike—as I knew it would.
But most days lately, I barely write over 500 words. To write 50,000 words in November, I have to average more than three times that, every day. I need to up my game if I want to win. I’ve been attempting this for years now, and a win would be awesome.
I think, though, that just making it through the whole month writing on one single story would also be a win. Wouldn’t it? It would be something I’ve never done before—a milestone. So, listen up, Inner Negative Voice, you can fuck off with the dour thoughts. I’m just going to keep going with my current goal and see where that takes me.
I have ideas. I haven’t taken any notes on what I want to write about; it’s all in my head so far. Not counting the first draft pages I wrote, the pages that now all count as backstory to the current story.
I’ve gone over all this before, so there’s no need to repeat it. If you’re new here (hello! welcome to the blog!), you can read back over the previous 65 days. The ones about NaNoWriMo should stand out from the others.
Tonight will probably just be another 500 or so words because I am not feeling well. It feels like I’m coming down with something, which would suck majorly. But here I am, in front of the keyboard and screen, tapping away. See? Habit over motivation. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s the best way to go if you have a goal that seems far away. Just start, and make a small promise to try to make it a habit.
There are other areas of my life where I could be putting this philosophy into practice. I have terrible attendance at work, for example, and I’m sure part of it is that it is elementary for me to convince myself to stay home. Maybe I should keep track of how many days in a row I go to work, and try to make that another daily (almost—I still get weekends off) habit? That would also help. Could I get to 65 days in a row? That number gets me well into the next year. If I’m doing the math right, that would be January 23, 2020, counting only weekdays and subtracting the holidays between now and then.
Feel free to check my math on that.
Another daily practice would be making dinner at home. It’s cheaper, and it makes it so much easier for me to eat well and not eat crap. But, again, I have gotten into the habit of stopping for fast food on the way home from work. Maybe I can just take it one day at a time and see how far I get?
I don’t know, maybe I’ve found a hammer and now every problem I have looks like a nail, but it’s worth a try, right?