Sitting here at almost 2:00 am looking back at three days of zero word count, I wonder did I set an impossible goal. Currently, I am working my two part-time jobs, which is more than forty hours a week between them. I am supposed to be studying for the New York Bar exam. And trying to write two books at the same time. All in the pursuit of making a life change over the next year, to make writing a part of my everyday life, and hopefully something more.
But, as always after the frenzy that is and will always be the beauty of NaNoWriMo, I have fallen off the writing horse. Can I get back up on it, before the week is out. I am gunning for Sunday, and my scheduled writing group. But to have a chance of catching up, I need to focus and get in my daily word count for Friday and Saturday, or that 10K words will have grown even higher.
Considering my options on how I can get myself to write, I realize it is not making me want to write, that is the problem. I always want to be writing, creating, playing in the worlds I create. It is finding the time between work and studying. But is it really finding the time or just giving myself permission to take the time off.
So I have come up with a plan. Each morning I will sit down and write for one hour. This hour will be before I check e-mail, open my Facebook, or check messages. Hopefully this will give me the time I need to write daily, at the same time not feel like slacking off.
On top of scheduled writing times, I have looked at some other options to really ratchet up my daily word count. , I found this sight called: four the words https://4thewords.com/, it was on the NaNo website. They call it the writers gym. I have to wonder if it will be like a really gym. Where you pay the membership and never go. Is committing 5 dollars a month to your writing real incentive to write. Coins and trophies for writing are intriguing but I am still not sure if this is really the way to go for me. However as the last week as shown me, maybe my way needs some changing.
Beyond setting a time, and signing up for a website to prod me into writing, I wonder what technique, other writers use to just give themselves that window to write, or even to edit. Is this a mere time management issue. I would like to say it is that simple, but in reality I think it goes deeper. To the idea that writing is fun, relaxing, and entertaining; it is not work. My own pressure to always be working and moving forward, makes this a distinction I need to over come.
If I want to write professionally, it is work, even though it is fun, and relaxing. That writing can be something more, than simple work in a traditional since, but this is easier said than done; when work is judge not by word count alone, but on its ability to put food on the table, and coffee in my cup. Hopefully this year, will allow me to make that internal change, they say it only takes 28 days to create a habit, but how many days does it take to break one. Now that is the question.
Once I make the internal change, hopefully the external one i.e. coffee in my cup will follow.
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