Daylight Savings Time

Many of you probably already know this, but it's time for the fun little half-year of DST to say bye-bye. I, for one, could not be happier. Not only does this give me, and in fact all of us, an extra little hour push for the day's writing, but it provides something fairly valuable besides just that. It gives us a bit longer in the sunlight.

Sunlight is good. It feeds the grass and trees (unless it's fall, in which it allows us to watch all these wonderful things wither and die), it signifies the day time, and of course, it's most important job, in that it provides us with a great source of light, as the name might ever-so-subtly imply. But, of course this all depends on whether or not it's being covered by a generous helping of clouds or not.

Anyway, beyond what magic happens in the realm of the sky, or what sorcery turns time back and forth an hour every other season, it's still time to write. And, as we are all probably aware, writing is good too. Which brings me to my first reason for bothering to write a blog post at 2:30 in the morning.

As I said in my post a couple of days ago, I had to somewhat stop myself in my conquest of my novel's progress in order to attend the weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. I had a plan, and I didn't adhere to it quite as well as I had... well... planned. My original thought was that I'd use small breaks in the action and write a little bit in the notebook at all possible times. Of course, this didn't happen. Well, I at least managed to bring the notebook and a writing tool, but everything else just kind of fell flat. So, yesterday, I found myself needing to play just a small game of catch-up to jump from my 21-or-so-thousand word count up to 30 thousand, in keeping with my 5k a day attitude.

I'm proud to say that I made it most of the way in another vastly helpful 6,500 word day, which leaves me short just less than a thousand words from 30k, which means another 6k day is in order for me to be back on track with myself. But, on the plus side, I've got a hook for a possible sequel. Maybe next year?

And that, boys and girls, is what will segue into my advice for today. Not the part about the sequel, but the whole word count thing.


Let me first start by telling you all a little bit of a story. Yesterday, as afternoon faded gently into the evening hours, I hadn't gotten but the minimal word count written for the day, and for my plans to come to fruition, I needed much, much more of those precious words. I had six hours left in the day, and just more than seven thousand words to write within that time frame. I quickly opened the calculator on my computer and did some math-like stuff to approximate the amount of words I needed to write within every ten minute span in order to reach my lofty goal. When I had my number, I quickly set to making it a reality. And so, every ten minutes I would check my word count and update it on the NaNoWriMo website, being sure to chart the amount of words I had written within that particular ten minutes against the total word count that I had last recorded. And thus, I proceeded to plumb the depths even further, with a new outlook on my journey.

In other words, instead of seeing 7-point-whatever-k in six hours, I saw 160-something in ten minutes. When I broke down that mental barrier that prevented me from seeing such large numbers in action, things flowed a lot more smoothly. My writer's block went away, ideas for the novel poured in, and my fingers just did the translation work. So, my NaNo advice for everyone today is: don't look at the big picture. Instead, break things down into smaller, more manageable chunks, and writing your novel won't become a chore, but something you can easily schedule as a relaxing wind-down to your day, or maybe as something to get you riled up and excited for something else (perhaps even writing more).

Once I finally saw the smaller picture and how it fit into the big one, much like a puzzle, my brain became excited to do the work I was asking it to do for me. Instead of writing 160 in ten minutes, I was writing 200 to 300 every ten minutes, and I was thrilled to see how my word count swelled. The only thing keeping me from hitting 30,000 yesterday? I took a break. And yes, taking breaks is important. If you don't, you can easily run the risk of burning yourself out on words for a while, and a while is much too long if you're participating in NaNo.

Now, the break I took was, I will easily admit, longer than I anticipated for, but that's okay.

To tie things all together again; I was taking a quick look at my usual blogs to read and I came across a participant that is having a tough go of it. So, I stopped lurking for once and offered her a piece of advice that I believe is helpful. Stop thinking about NaNo as a competition that you have to win in order for people to admire you and what you did. Once you get out of that mindset, things come a lot more naturally. And it's true, I've found that once you begin to worry less about your word count goals, the words come a lot easier, and your novel begins to feel fun to write, rather than a chore that needs doing. Trust me, people will still admire you and your courage for standing up atop the cafeteria tables and yelling at the top of your lungs, "I AM GOING TO WRITE A NOVEL IN THIRTY DAYS!" even if you weren't on top of your game, and perhaps even if you didn't quite make it all the way.

Or even if, you know, you didn't announce it with food threatening to stain your shoes. Either way, you're a hero in my books. So keep on plugging away at those small chunks, and I'll see you on the 30th at the finish line, whether or not you crossed with 50k, with a hug and a smile.