two weeks and more

Today marks eighteen days of me keeping my writing goal! Two days in that were over 1000 words, and four were 500 or more. That totals to nearly 9000 words, most of which were added to my NaNo novel (with about 2000 written in my quarterly challenge story for my writing group). And while that evil little gnome in the back of my head is saying that I wrote that much in one of my self-imposed Epic Sundays during NaNo, I'm heartily ignoring it. 9000 words is nothing to sneeze at, whether it's written in one day or two weeks, and the real accomplishment here is that I've been writing every single day for more than two weeks.


Popping out 20 page days every now and again is how I used to write, back in junior high and high school. I'm beyond that--it's easy, after all. Inevitably, you're going to have a weekend where you're really inspired and can crank out tons of words, but if you don't look at your story again for two months after that, is it really that much of an accomplishment? For me, sticking to the goal of writing every day is very amazing, since my attention span is usually far too short to entertain something like that, NaNo included.

How I survive NaNo boils down to three things: It's only once a year, my OCD wants my graph to be pretty without any flat-lining, and I can easily find that extra push by racing to beat all of my NaNo friends. It's a sprint that I can give my all to, and then collapse for a few months. Any other time of the year, it's a marathon, and I'm not racing; I'm battling against myself, and I'm definitely my worst enemy where procrastination comes in.

I think part of the reason it's working is, oddly enough, that I started it on an arbitrary date: the 19th of February. Last year, when I tried to start first thing on January 1st, I failed because I quickly tainted that new year's shine with non-writing days, and then I just didn't want to take another bite out of that bruised apple (yay random metaphors!).

The other reason for my success is definitely--certainly, without a doubt--how low I set my goal. If all I'm obligated to manage is one page of words, I don't find it hard to write every day; whether I can barely manage my 250 (like today, where updating my photo blog all day used all my words) or can jump far past that small hurdle, it remains small and not menacing. And then when I do manage to write 1000 words or more, I feel proud and radiant, as opposed to just being relieved that I once again managed my high goal, and being filled with dread for the failure tomorrow may hold.

I still am considering pumping my goal up to 500 once classes are out for the summer, but I'll just have to see how that goes. If I start to flounder in deeper water, I'll swim back to the shore and try again in the shallow. It may just be, with the way my brain works, that 250 words is the perfect place to set the mark.

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Listening to: So Help Me God by Fireflight. Love this song, especially since I'm starting to learn the lyrics better; Fireflight has been playing on repeat on my computer for days now. :)