Making Up for Lost Time

You may have noticed something missing last week. Around 10am I had a “CRAP I was supposed to write a blog post!” moment but was at work and did not have time to sit down and do it. So I told myself that evening I would go in and write it. Then it was Wednesday and I realized “CRAP. I forgot.”

That was a pretty good summary of my last week. Potentially even the entirety of the month. Though I suppose it isn’t so much that I’ve been forgetting to write but rather that I’ve been lacking motivation. I have sat down every day and poured words onto the page. Some days it’s been close to 3k, other days it’s closer to 100 words. Per NaNo’s tracker my average daily word count is hovering around 1550. If I excluded the skewed data, my actual daily average would likely be closer to 1400. Which is really great!

It’s also not a pace that I can even remotely keep up with throughout the rest of the year. I think my biggest takeaway from this month is that I’m fine tuning what does and does not work for me. Waking up early? Totally doable. Writing on my lunch break? Manageable most days, but sometimes I need to run errands. Coming out of NaNo, I want to make time to write every day, either in the morning or on my lunch break. I want to aim for 500-1000 words daily, but I don’t want to force myself. I want to write quality words not just quantity.

I love NaNo and everything it’s done for me. But I hate that I’ve written over 37000 words in 23 days and my data is still telling me that I’m behind. I keep thinking that maybe I’ve outgrown NaNo, but I keep going back to it. I like the deadline that holds me accountable. I NEED the deadline to hold me accountable. I love the community. I enjoy going out to spend time with friends. Drinking Starbucks twice a week? Definitely another bonus. But I have an awesome writer’s group that was formed out of NaNo.

And we’ve got each other’s backs.

(Also, Amelia kissed a girl… and she liked it.)

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