You know how there’s the couch to 5k program for runners? Well, once I decided that I will be participating in NaNoWriMo 2019, I came up with the idea to do a training program of sorts for myself.
Lest you think I’d ever consider running distances of any length, let me quickly explain.
Looking ahead to November for National Novel Writing Month, which entails thousands of participants signing up for the crazy feat of writing a novel first draft in 30 days, their minimum word count requirement to “win” or successfully complete the NaNoWriMo challenge is 50,000 words.
Because I focus on writing full-time, versus having to write in free-time after a day job like many NaNoWriMo participants, I figure I should shoot for more words since I can write for greater than 3 hours each weekday.
I decided to shoot for 87,000 words in my first draft manuscript, seeing as that averages out to 2.9k words each day (and 29 is one of my lucky numbers – the luckiest and most significant, you might say).
I set out to do this in August, coming up with the following plan for how many words to write each weekday in my diary on August 14, 2019 –
“There are 10 weeks until the week of November 1st (not including the week of my annual family vacay) starting Monday.
- August 19 – 23: 1,300 words
- August 26 – 30: 1,500
- September 3 – 6: 1,700
- September 9 – 13: 1,900
[vacation September 14 – 22] - September 23 – 27: 1,900
- September 30 – October 4: 2,100
- October 7 – 11: 2,300
- October 14 – 18: 2,500
- October 21 – 25: 2,700
- October 28 – 31: 2,900 words!
So, of course, I did two days the week of August 19th and then not much of anything worthwhile until this week. I am the queen of making excuses and breaking promises to myself.
However, moving forward, I’ll write my daily words towards my practice novel that I just announced on my NaNoWriMo profile today!
I just need to form the habit of putting words on the page before November so that I can then shift my focus more to the what I’m writing versus the when/where/how of shaping the writing routine.
Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash
