Wednesday, November 7, 2012

11/07/2012 Writing Wednesday!

Greetings everyone and welcome back! I hope your week has been fun and productive so far. I won't get political, but no matter who you voted for you have to agree that race was intense. It was like every time I looked at an update things were either one vote off or flipping back and forth. I don't remember an election like that before!

Hopefully you weren't all too distracted watching the political stuff and forgot about NaNoWriMo. I know getting to 50,000 words in such a short time is tough, especially with things like "family" and "the needs of others" and "eating" are getting in the way. I know there are a lot of you out there struggling to keep up with the word quota, and it's not like I'm assuming you all type and create slowly. I'd never do that, it's rude, and I know my own typing speed is not average. I completely understand that life just wants to shove itself in the way sometimes, and you can't always put it off until you reach that daily quota.

The website io9 had a great little article about how to finish your novel during NaNoWriMo the other day, and while I don't agree with all of their tips, it's still worth noting as helpful. For me I do agree with idea of rewarding yourself both in the writing sense and also post-writing sense. Sometimes people just need something to motivate them and using the 'If I finish X then I get Y' mentality is a way to do that. Granted you need to also have the self-control to not throw X over your shoulder and immediately go for the reward. I was hope that as writers, and that craft itself not being a fast one at all (Stephen King is the exception and a robot) that we'd all have the patience and self-control necessary to make that work.

Something else that is really important, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, is to have some kind of support structure. I'm not talking about people that will read your stuff as you're doing it, but more just people you can talk to that will encourage you to keep going. If you have an epiphany and you work out how something works that's been kind of bugging you for a while, tell someone that you know will appreciate that. If you are excited because you went above the daily word quota and put yourself ahead of the game, shout that to the heavens. Encouragement is incredibly important when it comes to writing because it gives us as authors something to work with. It's basically our test audience, if the actual test audience was filled with people who will say nice things.

Keep it up everyone who's participating along with me this month. My projections are still good to finish before the 22nd, which is fantastic. I'm going to try and slow it down a little typing wise just to make sure I don't go one week and have to take a break that sets me back. Remember what I said before, if it starts hurting, no matter what or where, it is time to take a break. I can't stress that enough. I'd hate to come back on December 1st to hear about how many people have hurt themselves.

I'll be back on Friday with my normal review. I hope you all have a great rest of your week and make wonderful progress on your journey through NaNoWriMo. Just remember to have fun with it and I'll see you back here!

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