Tag: writing community

Starting your day without a proper plan is like flying blind without a navigation system. It doesn’t bode well.

We walked through your top ten NaNoWriMo goals in an earlier post. As a refresher, there are five categories to keep in mind when picking your top ten goals: health, support system, writing, accountability, and fun. Then, you pick one or two goals for each category, adding up to a total of ten goals for your NaNoWriMo experience.

Now, you may have been thinking to yourself, Liz, ten goals is a lot. I don’t know if I have enough time in my day to get something done for each of those ten goals––let alone my actual NaNoWriMo daily word count.

But you may have more time than you realize. You just need to take a realistic look at what your time is actually going to.

Where Are You Now?

In order to achieve our goals, it’s important to have a gut check of where we are right now. Write down your current schedule on a piece of paper. Actually take your time doing this and be perfectly honest with yourself.

What does your morning look like? Are you sleeping in until nine in the morning every day? Are you waiting until the last minute to wake up for work in the morning and then scrambling to get ready?

What do your working hours look like? Are you using your break time at work to scroll through social media?

What does your afternoon look like? Do you find yourself nodding off at around three in the afternoon every day? Are you constantly reaching for coffee just to fight off exhaustion?

What does your evening look like? Do you get off of work and immediately go out for drinks with friends? Do you sit at home and watch television? How late do you stay up? Do you go to bed early or do you go to bed late?

When I asked myself these questions a few years ago, it was a hard reality check for me. The majority of my day was spent in a slump, and I honestly cannot tell you what I did during those waking hours. I can tell you that I wasn’t writing.

Where Do You Want to Be?

Now it’s time for you to figure out where you want to be. This is especially important as we go into NaNoWriMo. I want you to visualize what your ideal NaNoWriMo day will look like. Get detailed with it.

What does your morning look like? Are you waking up earlier to get your writing done? Do you workout in the morning as a part of your health goals? What do you eat in the morning to fuel your mind?

What does your work day look like? Those breaks you used to spend scrolling––are you writing instead? Are you walking for your lunch break instead of mindlessly scrolling? Do you call up one of your support system people for a quick chat?

What does your afternoon look like? Are you hydrating yourself properly so you don’t feel as tired? Are you taking a step away from work for a bit to do some meditation?

What does your evening look like? Do you call it quits for the workday at five and then go for a walk or a run before you start your evening? What time to you go to bed at night? Do you go to bed early or do you stay up a little bit later to get your writing done for the day?

Ask yourself these questions and really envision what you want your typical NaNoWriMo day to look like. Please note that every day is not going to be perfect. That’s life. Things happen. But the better we plan out our day and visualize it in full, the better we’ll handle whatever distractions life throws at us.

Routines

Over the next couple of days, I will be talking about routines in more detail, but I wanted to touch on the idea of routines in this post. We’ve all seen the epic morning and evening routines on YouTube. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend you check them out.

Writing should become a part of your daily routine. Morning, afternoon and evening routines need to involve your creativity in some way. This is particularly helpful during NaNoWriMo when we’ll all be aiming for 50,000 words in a month and we need to cram as much writing into our day as possible.

For example: I do a lot of my fantasy romance writing in the early mornings before my day gets started. In the afternoon (during my lunch break), I like to shoot videos and look at my blog. In my evenings, I write for my blog. I have it set up this way because my mornings are when my mind is freshest and I can be my most creative self. I break up my afternoon with a burst of creativity that doesn’t take too much brain power, but just enough to keep me on my toes. In the evenings, I’m ready to free write, and I view my blog almost like my diary where I can just vomit words onto a page and edit later.

Your routines may look very different from mine. Maybe you’re a night owl and find yourself way more creative at night. The bulk of your NaNoWriMo writing may need to be done at night, then. Maybe your day starts at an odd hour like ten at night because you work the night shift. Whatever your day looks like, your NaNoWriMo schedule needs to be tailored to that.

Be Realistic

Be realistic when you’re planning your ideal NaNoWriMo day. Would we all love to write for eight hours a day and achieve well over our word count on a daily basis? Yes. Is that realistic? No.

Figure out how much time you need during the day to accomplish your daily word count. You could be a writer that needs two hours just to get the typical 1667 words per day. You may not be able to carve that time out for yourself every single day and you may need to overcompensate on the weekends. Make sure you plan that out.

I recommend grabbing a planner like Angie Bellemare’s Daily Grind Planner to help you plan out your day. Her planner makes you list out your top ten goals every day and then write down your schedule so you know how you’re going to fit a task for each of your top ten goals into your day.

I’ll drop my ideal schedule down below so you can get an idea of what my typical day will look like in NaNoWriMo:

Notice that I incorporate my goals of fun into my schedule––I usually like to watch a movie and read in the evening. Remember to decompress after your long day and include your own fun goals into your schedule. Drop a comment below to let me know what you’re thinking in terms of your schedule and how you plan on incorporating your top ten NaNoWriMo goals into your day.

We are one week away from NaNoWriMo, which means it’s time to start dreaming big. What do you want your NaNoWriMo to look like? Do you want it to be the most productive month of writing? Do you want to use it to jumpstart your next novel? Are you already working on a novel and are planning on using it to finally finish that novel?

No matter what you’re planning for NaNoWriMo, it’s time to get your creative juices flowing.

A Vision Board

Whenever I’m working on a novel, I like to create a vision board for it. You can go the old fashioned route with cut outs from magazines or you can use a tool like Canva to put your vision board together.

I recommend pulling together images that not only represent your novel through people and objects, but also other images that represent what your novel means to you. Go through Pinterest––there is a ton of inspiration there.

If you put your vision board together in Canva, you’re able to adjust the dimensions so you can turn it into your desktop background. You’re going to want your writing inspiration at your fingertips and what better way to have your inspiration at the ready than to have it as your laptop background?

Anytime you open your laptop for anything, you’re automatically flooded with images of what you want to write for NaNoWriMo.

A Playlist

I have individual playlists for each of my books that I’m thinking of. I recommend prepping two separate playlists: one should be a soundtrack playlist with songs that have words in them and one should be a score playlist with no words at all. This way, when you’re out exercising or cleaning up around the house, you can listen to your soundtrack with words for inspiration. And when you actually sit down to write, you have a score that you can have in the background that won’t distract you from getting your word count in.

Have a specific scene in mind when certain music plays? Add it to your playlist. You could even break down the playlists further by breaking up your playlists into different chapters. So chapter one would have its own playlist, chapter two would have its own playlist, and so on.

Now is the time to have fun and be creative.

Television, Movies, and Books

Now, do not use television and movies to procrastinate on your writing. This is not me telling you that you get a free pass to just watch the TV all day and skip out on your writing. This is me telling you that you should gather together some shows and movies that inspire your story.

If you’re writing horror, there are a whole bunch of Halloween movies out there for you to add to your list to watch in November. Search for what makes sense for your genre and gain inspiration from there.

If you’re a bookworm like myself, you might find that television and movies aren’t enough. Have a couple of old favorites at the ready for those evenings where you just need to relax and recharge before you have to dive back into writing again.

When dealing with entertainment, remember this: consume less than you create. So if you spend two hours in the evening watching a movie, make sure you have spent at least two hours that day writing. Remember: this is NanoWrimo and you need to complete your 50,000 word count by the end of it.

Writing consistently every day for 30 days in a row can be hard. And it’s especially hard when you’re in the thick of it and have a bunch of different road blocks ahead of you. That’s why today’s post is a little different. Today’s post has a bit of tough love in it.

More often than not, during NanoWrimo we find ourselves surrounded by different excuses of why we’re not getting our writing done. Time, writer’s block, lack of inspiration, and fear are usually the main culprits that get in our way. I am familiar with all of them because I used to use them as an excuse as to why my writing wasn’t getting done.

Time

For the longest time, I used the fact that I work a full-time job as my reason why I wasn’t writing consistently. “My nine to five job was getting in the way of my dreams,” is what I told myself. That’s why I wasn’t writing as much as I would have liked.

Then throw time in for family and friends. “I can’t not have a social life,” I’d tell myself. “My friends and family need me.” There goes more time.

By the end of the day, I was too tired from all of my time being spent elsewhere that I simply couldn’t write. And so I’d say, “I’ll get to it tomorrow.” Well, tomorrow would come. And then I wouldn’t write. Again, I’d fall asleep with the promise of tomorrow in my head. “Tomorrow, I will write.”

I lived my life in an endless loop, holding out for a vision of tomorrow that never came true because I thought I didn’t have enough time. Here’s the thing, though: I had time. I was just spending it on the wrong things.

Instead of waking up early to get my writing in, I chose to sleep in until I absolutely had to get ready for work. Instead of spending my lunch breaks at work writing, I chose to scroll through social media. Instead of committing my evening to writing, I was watching television to unwind from the day. All of these things are completely reasonable to do, by the way. But they aren’t reasonable when you have a goal of writing and the spare time you do have is wasted away by other less important things.

I used time as my excuse for a while. It isn’t until I started looking at my day and actually saw what I was doing during my waking hours that I realized I had all the time I needed to accomplish my writing goals. Time was just an excuse––my lack of planning and creating time was the real problem.

Writer’s Block

If I did sit down to finally crank out some words, I’d often find myself dealing with writer’s block. “Oh, inspiration isn’t coming,” or “I’m not motivated” are phrases I used often. It was always my writer’s block that was the problem––not me.

If you’re waiting for inspiration to strike or for motivation to come, I’ve got news for you: it’s not striking and it’s not coming. The key to overcoming writer’s block is planning ahead and writing consistently every single day.

By transforming your writing into a daily habit as opposed to a spur of the moment kind of thing where you only write when you feel like it, you can easily beat out writer’s block.

Don’t get me wrong. There will be days where you maybe get a hundred words out on the page and have to step away. But that’s a hundred words that you worked hard for and pushed through for. Do not let writer’s block become an excuse to not get your writing done.

Fear of Failure

This one hits me hard. Have you ever tried something and failed? I have.

When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a music teacher. I went to my classes and found myself very unenthusiastic about the whole thing. My heart just wasn’t in it, but I kept trying. I didn’t give it my all and I think in the back of my mind I knew I didn’t want to do it for a living. My grades consisted of C’s and D’s and sometimes F’s.

It wasn’t until a few years into the degree where one of my professors took me aside and told me that I wasn’t going to graduate on time at the rate I was going. I left that meeting devastated––I mean, honestly. I went to college and it seemed like I wasn’t going to graduate.

I remember going into one of the piano practice rooms where you could just lock yourself in. It was pretty much soundproof so I knew I wouldn’t bother anyone if I just sank to the floor and cried. And that’s what I did. I stayed in there for a few hours, sinking down into that failure.

Here’s the thing: I failed because my heart wasn’t in it. I did, eventually, graduate college. But I graduated college with an English degree, not a music education degree.

I firmly believe that a fear of failure stems from the fact that your heart might not be wholly committed to something. If you give writing your all––and I mean, really, give it your all––there is no way you can possibly fail.

You won’t fail because you won’t allow yourself to fail. So what if you publish your first book and it’s not a hit? So what if your first series isn’t a success? The beautiful thing about writing is this: in order to not fail at writing, you just have to keep on writing.

So keep on writing.

Fear of Success

The fear of failure hits me hard. But the fear of success hits me harder. There’s a poem by Erin Hanson that goes like this:

This is a real fear. Let’s say you accomplish your writing goal for NanoWrimo. Let’s say you finish the 50,000 words. You’re now faced with the question of: “Now what?”

Once you hit your 50,000 words, I recommend you take a moment to pat yourself on the back before you get after your next great goal. Because you will have a next great goal and it is going to be bigger than your last.

What excuses are you holding onto? What road blocks are in your way that you need to take a detour on? Think about it and let me know in the comment section below.

Regardless of the excuses you come up with, your writing will always be there for you no matter what. It is simply waiting for you to begin.

Over the past few days, we’ve talked a lot about the five categories you should base your NanoWrimo goals on. Those five categories are health, support system, writing, accountability, and fun. For categories and goals that don’t necessarily have to do with writing, I strongly recommend checking out Angie Bellemare’s YouTube channel.

Now that we’ve thoroughly discussed the five categories, it’s time to start putting your top ten monthly goals together. One or two of your goals should be dedicated to each of the five categories and add up to a total of ten goals for NanoWrimo.

Becoming a Goal Digger

I’ve mentioned before that I used to go into NanoWrimo with the goal of writing 50,000 words. But that goal isn’t personal enough for me. That’s part of the reason why I like to break down that larger goal into ten individual goals. Those ten goals need to speak to me on a very deep and intimate level.

For each category, I think about what is nagging at me in the back of my mind. What’s an absolute embarrassment to me that I want to change? I used to not be able to walk up the stairs without huffing and puffing. No one ever said anything about it, but I felt embarrassed about it. As a grown woman, I shouldn’t have been out of breath by the time I reached the top of the stairs. Now I exercise almost every day because I made that one of my health goals. I made a decision that I never wanted to feel that humiliation of being out of breath after walking again.

Think about what’s really bugging you and turn it into a goal for the month of November. Use those strong emotions to help you accomplish them.

Be Selective

Pick your goals not based on what you think others want for you, but what you actually want for yourself. If you want to finish NanoWrimo strong, then plan your goals around that. How can each of your top ten goals drive your ultimate goal of having written 50,000 words over the course of a month?

Be picky when you’re deciding on your top ten goals for NanoWrimo. Remember: your driver for the month is to write a novel in 30 days. All of your goals for the month need to be driving you towards that.

Make sure you think each goal through. How will your health goals fuel your writing throughout NanoWrimo? How will you use your support system to get you through the month? What are your actual writing goals aside from the 50,000 word count? What is holding you accountable and keeping you on track to finish? What will you do to reenergize yourself and blow off steam throughout the month?

Be Specific

50,000 words is a lot. Especially in a month. Don’t just look at the month ahead and say, “I’m going to write 50,000 words.” Get specific on how you’re going to use your goals to actually finish NanoWrimo.

Remember to tie your goals to a number and make sure that they are measurable. If you have a generic goal to just workout, that won’t do. Write down how many workouts you’ll complete throughout the month of November. Are you aiming to workout every single day? Then your goal for November should be to hit 30 workouts. Will you write every single day? Then your writing goal should be to write 30 days straight.

These goals need to speak to you on a whole other level. Really give these goals some thought and figure out where you want to be, how you want to feel, and what you want to have accomplished by the end of November.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk through roadblocks that you might hit during NanoWrimo and how you can start planning to overcome those.

Okay. So. You’ve got your daily health, support system, writing, and accountability goals. Now it’s time for some fun. I’ve seen other writers break down their reward system on a week by week basis, or when they reach a certain word count––which is great for those big milestones throughout NanoWrimo. But if you need something to tide you over in between those bigger celebrations, then just keep reading.

I used to think that NanoWrimo was a month long drag where I couldn’t have any fun until December 1st. My weekly celebrations weren’t as fun as I had hoped and I found myself burning out quickly over the course of the month. NanoWrimo is a marathon, not a sprint––which meant my burn out needed to be remedied.

That’s when I decided that every day I would do something for myself that I considered fun. It needed to have nothing to do with NanoWrimo and had to bring me complete joy. I started off with carving out time in my evening routine for reading and watching some Asian dramas. I just wanted something to get my mind off of the fact that I was pushing towards this huge goal of writing a novel in a month.

Think about what makes you smile. Do you enjoy watching standup comedy? Is there a favorite show you are in love with right now? Write down everything that makes you happy. Pick two items from that list and then figure out how you’re going to incorporate it in your top ten goals.

We won’t actually plan out your NanoWrimo day (a later post will address that), but start thinking about how you can incorporate a bit of happiness every day of the month of November. Don’t wait for those big milestones to treat yourself. It’s important to find a bit of happiness every day. This will help prevent you from burning out and will make the whole process a lot more fun.

So far in Preptober, we’ve tackled your health, support system, and writing goals. By now, you should have six goals in mind for NanoWrimo (two for health, two for your support system, and two for your writing goals). But now it’s time to tie all of those together with your accountability goals. Your accountability goals should be the glue that keeps everything together.

We have the best intentions with goals. We strive to follow through. We make plans to exercise, schedule time with our family in our week, and are determined to reach our daily word count. But at the end of the day, what is holding you to those goals?

Having something or someone holding you accountable can help strengthen your resolve when it comes to your NanoWrimo goals.

Find a Writing Buddy

Writing buddies give me the warm fuzzies. They check in on your writing, see how you’re doing and volunteer to meet up at a cute little coffee shop for a warm cup of tea and a writing sprint. But finding someone like that can be a bit of a challenge.

Ask around your friend group if anyone of them is participating in NanoWrimo. Chances are you might find a kindred spirit looking to finish NanoWrimo.

If you’ve asked around and haven’t found anyone to partner up with, don’t fret. Search in your area or online for a writing buddy. You can always look me up on NanoWrimo.org as well. I’m more than happy to connect.

Your Writers Group

In addition to being a part of your support system, your writers group can also be a part of your accountability goals. Set a date to meet once a week so you can actually get your writing done. The very act of setting up a specific date, time, and location with others means that you know you need to show up. Knowing that you have a group waiting for you can help motivate you to complete your daily word count.

Social Media

If you’ve ever tried waking up early to write before, you might find that it’s difficult to drag yourself away from the comfort of your warm bed and over to your cold desk where a blank page is staring at you. Or maybe you’re working on your novel into the wee hours of the evening where not a single person is awake.

It’s moments like these that I tend to rely on social media as my accountability check. I usually snap a photo of my lit candle and the time or a quick video of my desk set up so others can see that I’m doing what I said I was going to do. Doing a daily post of yourself writing or sitting down to write can help you stay on course.

For my social media accountability, I’ll be using YouTube for daily write with me sessions. I’m debating whether or not I want to live stream them or just record them and put some theme music to each of them, so I’ll need to give that some thought. Regardless, having a channel solely focused on keeping me accountable throughout November is going to help me in my NanoWrimo goals.

Write down two accountability goals of your own and add it to your list of goals for the month. Join me tomorrow for a post on how you’re going to reward yourself regularly for all of your hard work throughout NanoWrimo.

The act of writing can be very lonely at times. As writers, we are the creators of worlds that we will never live in. We can visit there for a time, but we are only visitors in the worlds that we build. The characters that we write may feel like our friends and our family at times, but at the end of the night when it’s time to go to bed, we are left wanting for more than the fictional creatures we have conjured up in our minds.

This is why it is so important that we have a support system in place––especially during NanoWrimo. The month of November will already be hard enough with attempting to write 50,000 words in a single month, but the thought of facing that alone is daunting. A support system will help carry you through this journey and cheer you on while you do it.

Everyone should know who’s in their corner when they step up to take on NanoWrimo. Do you?

Friends

Letting your friends know about NanoWrimo can be intimidating. For the longest time, I would avoid talking about my writing with my friends because I thought it was just a silly dream that I had. I would listen to everyone else’s dreams with amazement and wonder. I’d cheer them on saying, “You got this! You can do it!” And, at the same time I was telling them they could do anything they put their minds to, I was hiding my own dreams and letting them stay in the dark. I watched in jealousy and envy while other people in my life shined brightly, embracing their true calling while I tucked my dreams away in a drawer never to see the light of day.

I was so afraid that if I shared my dreams with my friends that they’d tell me I would never make it. That I wouldn’t be able to do it. And, honestly, any real friend would never say those things. True friends don’t laugh at my dreams. And neither will yours.

Your friends should be lifting you up. And you, in turn, should be lifting them up. There is no room for jealousy or pettiness when you’re friends. Their victories are your victories; their defeats are your defeats. And vice versa.

They are your chosen family––the ones who grew to love you simply because of you being your most authentic and real self. Do not tarnish the bonds of friendship by keeping your NanoWrimo goals a secret. Let your friends know what you’re trying to accomplish and how they can support you.

Do you need a friend to drop by with some delicious home cooked food once a week? Ask for it.

Worried that your sanity might break if you don’t get out and breathe in some fresh air? Designate a walking buddy from your friend group.

Whatever you need from your friends during this time, ask for. But in December, when NanoWrimo is over, make sure that you have a way to thank them for their support. Bake their favorite cookies, host a party at your place to celebrate the end of NanoWrimo, or even give them actual thank you cards––make sure that you give back to them and show them that you appreciate what they have done for you.

Family

Love ’em or hate ’em, your family can be a part of your support system as well. When I was a kid and just getting into writing, I used to hide my writing from my family. My parents would come into the study where we had one computer for the whole household and I would quickly shut all of my tabs. My parents, of course, would give me weird looks and ask, “So…what are you doing?”

I’d give them some vague answer and hope they didn’t realize that I was writing. I was caught a couple of times and I may as well have been caught for looking at something inappropriate with the way that I acted. My parents? Didn’t. Care. One. Bit.

As I got older, I grew more comfortable with writing around my family. I still wouldn’t let them see my writing, but I wasn’t hiding it so fiercely anymore. I would spend hours writing in different notebooks and dreaming up different worlds to explore. My family, although confused about my absolute passion for writing, encouraged my interest.

They didn’t realize at the time that it was more than a hobby for me. It wasn’t until I became an adult, got out into the world and knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to be a writer that they understood the full scope of what I was aiming for.

While they still don’t understand where my path is headed quite yet, I know that they have my back. And wherever you might be with your family in your writing journey, you might have someone in your family that has your back. And while they might not understand your fierce passion for writing or why you’d take on NanoWrimo, you know they’ve got your back.

Open up to family members that you feel comfortable with sharing your goals with. Have a dinner with them once a week just to blow off some steam. Talk through your ideas over dessert. If you aren’t sure you’re comfortable with talking to your family about your NanoWrimo goals, then pick a really close friend and talk things through with them.

Point is: reach out.

Writing Community

The writing community is huge. In nearly every big city there are writers meetings and writers critique groups available. Full week conferences and writers retreats are available at our fingertips thanks to the power of the Internet.

I recently moved to the Charlotte area and immediately started researching for my local writers group. I managed to find one that meets once a week and just writes. Which is great because sometimes I just need to sit and write amongst my peers.

Writers meetings are also great because it means you’re tapping into a network of people who are most likely going through NanoWrimo with you. Meeting others who have the same goal is a fantastic way for you to talk through strategies and support one another.

Don’t be afraid to look online for local writers groups in your area. If you’re having difficulty finding one, try to find one through MeetUp.com.

Your Support System

Writing might be a solitary activity, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. Tapping into your support system throughout NanoWrimo to keep your head in the game is important. Know who’s in your corner, and set aside two of your top ten goals this month for your support system whether it be your friends, family, or your writers group.