Time Management for Writers #nanowrimo

My friend *lizzie shared this on her blog the other day:

So, there's just one thing you all should say to me during November: "GET BACK IN YOUR ROOM!"

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NaNoWriMo Angel

I found this calendar with a great quote when I was poking around last week for a calendar to use for NaNoWriMo. I ended up going in my own hacked-together DIY direction to track my progress, but this was too cute not to share.

#NaNoWriMo Day 2: Full of FAIL

Well, I've got a big, fat goose-egg of a wordcount tonight. Plenty of excuses. None worth sharing. 

I WILL do better tomorrow!

Okay, NaNo-ers, on your marks, get set...

Go!

What did I learn from NaNoWriMo last year?

If you're thinking about trying NaNoWriMo this year, I'm over at Heartland Writers Group today talking about what I learned from NaNo last year.

What I learned from NaNoWriMo

Whew! I made it! I wrote 50,000 words in one month, actually less than that, considering I started a week late, I finished a day early (25 hours, to be exact) and there were a handful of days scattered through the month that I didn't write at all. In total, I wrote 17 days this month.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo once before, and tried it unofficially another time, and I didn't finish either time. I didn't even come close. Finishing, and finishing early on top of it, felt really, really good!

Here are a few things I learned over the last month (in no particular order)

• It's good to have a plan. 
• I'm usually a pantser (someone who discovers the story as she writes, rather than plotting first), but this time I started out with what I called a Fuzzy Synopsis (as opposed to the legendary Dreaded Synopsis) - it was just a vague plan of my story arc and the points I wanted to hit. I kept the file open a lot and it became a place to throw things I saw coming down the road, but that I hadn't gotten to yet.
• I also used a calendar. For years, my writers group's "Goals Guru" *lizzie has encouraged us to use a desk calendar to track our writing progress through the year. I've never been good with the paper calendars and usually track it in my Google Calendar instead. NaNoWriMo turned out to be an exception, thanks to a lucky purchase. Months ago, I bought a $1 calendar mouse pad at the craft store. It was a horrible failure as a mouse pad, but it's the perfect size to keep on a little stand between my keyboard and the shelf my laptop sits on. On it, I tracked each day's goals and progress.
  

• I needed a better plan for laundry. I washed the clothes, but very few of them got put away. I've been wearing wrinkled clothes from a basket for three weeks. Hopefully by next November, LilGirl will be well-trained in putting away her own clothes. I won't hold out the same hope for Hubby - that's a battle I gave up on years ago. But we will have a better system in place by then. We won't even talk about the rest of the housework.
  
• It's good to reward yourself. Some nights it was tough to make my word count. On Monday nights I bribed myself to get done early so I could watch Big Bang Theory. Other nights, I told myself that as soon as I was done I could watch the new episode of The Guild. Once or twice, the bribe was a shower. I tried to keep the bribes non-food-based, but I have to admit there were nights the bribe was a piece of dark chocolate.
• It's good to reward your family, too. The last couple days of writing were tough on LilGirl. Her reward for letting me finish was getting out the Christmas dollhouse we haven't taken out of the box since we moved into this house four years ago.
• Sometimes you have to be your own Jillian Michaels. Sunday, the final day, was the hardest. I knew I had to do 8000 words in two days, which is more than I've ever done in that amount of time. A strong feeling of being overwhelmed started to come over me, but I knew I would kick myself forever if I came so close to finishing and didn't make it. So I broke out the sticky notes and the Sharpie and wrote myself a note that said "Four sets of 2000 words and you're done!" 2000 words is less than I had been doing each night. It was do-able. I promised myself a break between each set and got to work on the first one. It worked. Even though I had another day to finish, once three sets were done and it was only 6:00 pm, I knew I'd finish on Sunday. The last 2000 words were the hardest. My brain was full of all sorts of other things I could be doing, like reorganizing my bookmarks or cleaning my keyboard. I wrote another note, "2000 words to go! WooHoo!" and stuck it to the calendar, then dove in. A couple hours later, I was done. (You can see the sticky notes stuck to the calendar in the picture above)
  
• The rumors that you don't shower much during NaNo is totally true. Sorry to those of you who had to put up with my stinkiness.

The biggest thing I learned:

• I can do this! After struggling along with another story for literally years, it was good to set that one aside and come out with a whole new story in under a month. Yes, it needs a lot of editing (boy, does it ever!) but it's light years ahead of the other story for the amount of time I've spent on it. This has extinguished one doubt among many about my future writing career - that I can work to deadline without having to spend years on a single story. I've given myself a deadline for editing and submitting my NaNo story, then I hope I'll be able to return to the other story with renewed vigor and finish it. By next November, I should be ready to jump into another fresh story and do it all over again.
  

I did it! #NaNoWriMo

I'll post more details tomorrow. Right now, it's time for bed. It's been a loooong November and I'm tired.

Made my Minano goal!

My local RWA chapter, Heartland Writers Group is doing a Mini-NaNo, or Minano, with a goal of 25,000 words rather than the 50,000-word goal of NaNoWriMo. I'm doing both and I hit the Minano goal last night, shutting down the computer at 25,528 words.

*Happy Dance!* 

Now, onward with NaNoWriMo!

Wed Pic: Is Robin Hood in there?

I'm pounding away at my take on Robin Hood for NaNoWriMo. Alas (or fortunately?) there were no outlaws in the forest near Norwich when I was there.

Done...well, sort of

I reached a milestone tonight. Three weeks late, or 20 years late, depending on how you look at it, I reached the end of my first draft. I wanted to have it done before I started NaNo this month, but I got a little stuck. Thankfully, I have my great critique group who brainstormed me out of that, and I finally got over (or just pushed through) my own hangups about reaching the end.

Now I get guilt-free NaNo-ing for the rest of the month. Well, free from the voices that said "You haven't finished your main WIP yet! You never finish anything! You suck!" As to the other voices, well, I'll deal with them later. For tonight, I'm sort of floating in a weepy sort of way (if you don't cry when it's done, what was the point?). In December, the editing starts, but I'll think about that in a couple weeks.

Now I've got an incredible amount of NaNo-ing to catch up on! Can I just type "the" 45,000 times? I didn't think so.

I took the plunge

I signed up for NaNoWriMo!

You can track my progress (or lack of it - we'll see how November goes) by clicking on the icon above.