Hello writers, does it seem like November is closing in? It does to me… the days grow rapidly shorter and the Time of the Furious Writing is almost upon us.
I’ve done some form of Nanowrimo now for … wow, maybe since 2001? I think? Because I have a friend who knew Chris Baty, the writer who started Nano, who told me about it and got me to join. Back then we didn’t have forums and such, just an idea…! And a plan to meet up in coffee shops and complain about how hard writing is. 🙂
But I digress. The point is, I’ve been doing it almost every year for a looooong time and I know about burnout. Burnout happens to me, I’d say, roughly half the times I do it, and I don’t “finish,” whatever that means.
And that’s okay. I’m still a writer. And you are, too.
The important thing to remember about Nano is, if you start it, you’ve already won it, in my opinion. You’ve set yourself up a commitment to write. After that, I honestly don’t think it matters if you write every day, or if you write 50K words, or if you ever use what you wrote. You’re still building your writing muscles, your habit, and you’re still a writer.
So today, your exercise is to simply reflect on that. If you want to revise your Nano goal, feel free! You could aim to use the month for revisions, or for short stories (say, completing one story a week — that would be an intense and ambitious goal!) or set aside your expectations and view Nano as a grand experiment.
Tomorrow we’ll talk more about motivation and how I trick myself into completing goals!
<3