Lately, I’ve been reading No Plot, No Problem! by Chris Baty. Although I’m not planning to do Nanowrimo anytime soon, this book did inspire me to set up a personal writing challenge for myself. For awhile I’ve been writing a little bit every day, and I’ve been finding it frustrating because the progress is so incremental. I like the feeling of, “Woah, look how far I got!” I don’t get that feeling often when I average around 250 words a day.
After reading a book full of tips for Nanowrimo writers, it made me curious about if I would enjoy writing more if I did a planned burst of writing once in awhile.
So I marked on my calendar May 6th to May 19th. I’m giving myself 14 days to write a little over 12,000 words which will effectively finish the rough draft of the second book of The Altered Realities of a Dream-maker. I was wondering if I would make it to three novellas or not, but seeing how my chapters are getting longer and longer, three books is going to happen.
Although this is a modest challenge (I can do it by writing 1000 words a day), I’m taking it on with the mindset that I want to focus on writing for the next two weeks. I’m excited about this because when I’m writing every day, I’m afraid to postpone things to make room for writing because I have no clue when I’ll get back to the things I put off. So it’s not unusual for me to lose writing time to other activities, such as catching up on a favorite TV show or cleaning the house.
However, with the concept of writing in bursts, it’s okay if I postpone mopping the floor for two weeks to work on my story because I can do it when that time period is up. Yes, there maybe a new show on Netflix I want to watch, but I can go two weeks without it. Along with the promise of seeing a lot of progress in short time, I think it’ll be worth pushing myself.