October 18 2018

Finding Time to Write NaNoWriMo

As October draws to a close and November approaches I find myself thinking about how I will fit in the time it takes to write every day. There are several things I can do during October to lessen the demands on my time next month. While I am planning to use these to find the time to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), these ideas could work for anyone at any time of the year for any reason you might be looking to find more time in your schedule to do the things you need or want to do. So here is what I can do to save as much time as possible.

Stock the Pantry

This sounds so simple, but if we stock up on the basics and make sure we have what we need to make meals and snacks, this will save us from unscheduled trips to the grocery. I also highly recommend that you make sure you have enough toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent, paper plates or whatever it takes to keep things running smoothly without the need to do those pesky little tasks like washing dishes for the next four to six weeks. Obviously, I try to stock up when things are on sale anyway, but this might not be possible, so just this once, sale or not, I will be stocking up to get me through the month of November at the very least and preferably through the rest of the year…think hectic holidays.

Menu Planning

You might already plan your weekly meals, and if so, that is great. If you don’t, now is the time to get started on that new habit. Plan things that can be prepped now and frozen, then just thawed overnight and dumped in a crockpot in the morning before work to save time with dinner prep later. Consider adding bagged salads or salad kits to your meal plan once or twice a week. When life gets crazy-busy, this is not the time to eat junk food and cut back on fruits and veggies. These can actually be easy or no prep snack and meal options to fall back on. These are also super easy to throw in a lunch bag when heading out the door to work. Trust me, plan simple meals that take little time to cook or make extras and freeze meal-sized portions to be eaten next month. Maybe menu planning means partnering up with a friend and making a schedule where you trade off cooking and share the feast every other night or something. Get creative, but plan to nourish your body instead of punishing yourself with unhealthy alternatives.

Consider things like browning larger batches of ground beef or turkey all at once then drain and freeze it in bags of about 2 cups/1 pound so it is ready to make tacos, sloppy joes, spaghetti, Hamburger Helper or whatever you use it for. It thaws much faster when it is precooked than a block of raw meat and make dinner prep much faster because there is less cooking and cleaning time involved.

Grill a whole grill full of meat the next time you cookout and package the meat in individual serving sizes and freeze after it cools. We have pre-cooked burgers, brats, pork chops, chicken, and more. Having this food cooked and “banked” in the freezer means you can eat grilled meat with very little trouble all year long.

Clean all of your produce and bag it in snack-sized portions so it is easy to grab the healthy stuff and get back to writing. Anything you can do in larger batches and ahead of time will save you time later.

Clean the House

Yes, this means you. If your house is cleaned thoroughly this month then you can let it slide a little while you are busy next month. If possible just pick up after yourself regularly so it stays basically company-ready through November and you will be that much ahead of things for the holidays. We don’t want cleaning to be your procrastination activity of choice to avoid writing your novel. If you are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, try FlyLady.

Practice Your Craft

Practice writing or doing something to work on your novel every day, if possible, to get a jump start on the habit for next month. Don’t hesitate to count “writing adjacent” activities toward the daily habit. My friend Alicia introduced this phrase to me and it means doing anything from outlining, reading, watching movies in a comparable genre to the novel you are writing, research, etc. as long as it has something to do with writing. It might just be five minutes a day the first week, but the next week you can increase it to ten minutes a day. If you want to be a writer, you must make time to write. Make it a priority in your life and start building small pockets of time to do something toward your writing goal with any free bit of time you find even if it is only five minutes at a time. All those little pockets of time can really add up. Keep a notebook or index cards with you to jot a quick idea or note about something that you thought of that you want to add to your novel. You can do this while standing in line, instead of pickup up your phone and scrolling through your social media feeds, instead of binging on TV or NetFlix. You know what your time stealers are…you don’t have to give them all up, but switch a few to writing adjacent activities. Thanks, Alicia for sharing writing adjacent-ing with us!

You Need A Plan

Plan what you will write. That means you need to get to know your characters, your setting and at least your major plot points ahead of time. Do whatever you can ahead of time to make sure you know what you are writing and will be ready to jump in a start writing on November 1st. If you have a well-planned project, you will be less likely to struggle with writer’s block when the pressure is on.

Those are my suggestions for organizing your time, specifically so you can write your novel with me and all the other NaNo participants in November. If you are not a writer, you can still make use of these tips (most of them anyway) to get you through those super busy times in your life without compromising your mental or physical health while you do so.

If you have any other time management tips to share, please leave them in the comments below, use the contact form or send me a message via email. I am always looking for ways to save time or make more time for the million things I really want to do but never seem to have enough time for. If I get enough tips, I will compile them into a new post to share here.

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, please read more here. It is really a great way to meet other writers and get started on your story.

Category: NaNoWriMo, Organizing, Writing | Comments Off on Finding Time to Write NaNoWriMo
November 30 2017

NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

I have come a long way as a writer in the last four years. I have finally become a year-round writer. (As of this month I have written over 113,000 words so far this year!) I am not afraid to call myself a writer. I have put in the work and time and, though I may not have a book published yet, I AM a writer. I have 5 NaNo wins under my belt to prove it (to myself if nothing else).

My motivation for the month was a printout of the image below. This is my 2014 NaNoWriMo progress graph, also the first year I attempted to write fiction. As you can see I got off to a super slow start because I had no idea HOW to write fiction and I just plain had NO IDEA for a plot of any sort. I seriously doubted I could ever catch up once I got started and then around the 25k mark, I began to question whether I had a workable plot at all (I really didn’t), so I didn’t write anything for a few days. Seeing this graph and how I beat the odds, no matter how badly they were stacked against me, kept me going this month. My present-self would like to take this opportunity to thank my 2014-self for sticking it out and winning because if I hadn’t done it back then, I’m not sure I would have believed I could do it this year.

Continue reading

Category: NaNoWriMo, Writing | Comments Off on NaNoWriMo Wrap-up
November 25 2017

Familiar (Five Minute Friday)

By now, you are familiar with the fact that on Fridays, or soon thereafter, I participate in this thing called FiveMinuteFriday.com. Each week,  provides a one-word prompt to write about for 5 little minutes. Sometimes they just flow out of me without much thought. Other times, like tonight, nothing comes to mind and I just don’t know what to write. As a writer, this happens sometimes. Some would call it writer’s block. I’m not sure I believe in writer’s block. In my case, when I can’t think what to write, it is really a case of idea block. Once I get an idea, I can write about it. Sometimes I can’t find much to write, but other times one little spark ignites an entire bonfire of other ideas and I am off and writing.

Writing my novel this month as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge is getting tougher because I am running out of the scenes I had planned to write. I have been adding scenes in along the way as I think of them or find a hole in the plot that needs to be filled. I don’t want to just write stuff for the sake of word count, so no, I will not be adding a dragon to my novel or an unexplained dead body just to boost the word count only to have to cut it all later when future me gets around to editing this novel. I am familiar with the difficulties of editing and future has begged current and past me never to do that to her.

I was on par one day this month, the 12th, I think. I am familiar with the perils of falling behind in my word count, of starting late or slowly, of getting to the 25,000 words stage and questioning everything I have written so far and thinking there is no point in continuing as it is all terrible and no one will ever want to read it. Despite all of these typical doubts and fears, there are only six days left in the month and I still need to write about 11,000 words. I am trying to keep in mind this year that my story needs to be finished which means it needs a beginning, middle, and end. My characters need to grow and change over the course of the novel. I need to get back to writing the novel, but instead, here I am writing this blog post. Really any excuse will do. I don’t feel too bad because I did write 3,000 words today in my novel and these words don’t count toward my monthly NaNo goal. I am familiar with this thing I am doing right now. It is called PROCRASTINATION. Sometimes it comes in the way of writing blog posts like tonight, or doing laundry and loading the dishwasher like yesterday. I know all about it because it used to happen back in college when there was homework to be done. Hubby would catch me cleaning the house and he knew, he was familiar with my tactics. He would ask me what school work I was avoiding by doing housework. Pretty smart that man of mine. Ok, enough of this procrastinating, let’s end this post so I can get back to the novel I should be writing. Stay tuned next week when November ends and see how I did.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Familiar
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, NaNoWriMo | 2 Comments on Familiar (Five Minute Friday)
November 17 2017

Excuse (Five Minute Friday)

Happy Friday! I know you are all plenty sick and tired of me talking about NaNoWriMo, but it is November and if you know anything about me, you will know this is my 5th year straight writing for the 50,000 word challenge in 30 days, it is what I do and that is my excuse. Hey, it is fun. Really, it is a blast! It is probably the hardest thing I do all year, but the most satisfying too. If you read my most recent blog post, you know all about how I was sick at the beginning of the month and how it took me until day 12 to catch up to where I was supposed to be. You also know I fell behind again right away. I am still behind. I could use any of those things as an excuse to quit. I could also use the fact that I’m not sure if I really have a clue how to plot or plan a fiction novel much less write one as an excuse and it would be a valid one. I could say it is too hard, I don’t know what to write, my story has taken itself in a different direction than I planned, my characters are not behaving themselves, they keep doing things I don’t understand and didn’t expect. Again, all true and all valid excuses. But I am not a quitter. I signed up for the challenge and I will win it. I have started lots of novels but never finished one. This is supposed to be the year I not only “win” the challenge, but also finish the novel during the month of November (I say that every year). I may not get that far, but somehow I WILL manage to write the 50,000 (or more) words before the month ends.

While I make excuses for so many things every day, there is no excuse for me not winning. Yes, I work full-time outside the home at a job during which I cannot write my novel. This month I have been working much longer days than usual and battled being sick for several days. Those excuses won’t cut it. I will spend every free, waking minute writing if I have to, but I will not make excuses for why I failed to get the writing done.

I am here to tell you that if I can win this challenge and write 50,000 words in 30 days while working full time and all those other valid excuses, then YOU can do things you probably don’t really think you can do too. In November 2013, when I “won” my first NaNoWriMo just before Thanksgiving, I felt like a million bucks. I was so proud of myself. I had so much confidence. I felt like I could do anything. I had just written more than I had probably written in my whole life combined. I had put my introverted self out there and gone to strange places I had never been before to write with strange people I had never met before. I found out that other people in my state, my city, my neighborhood are writers, I was not the only one who wanted to write a novel, but I am to only one who can write the novel I am currently writing. I am a winner. I AM a writer. I am not afraid of so many things I used to be afraid of because if I set my mind to it, I CAN DO ANYTHING! Mom always said it, but I never really believed her until November 2013.

So if you can’t find me and it is November, I am somewhere writing like my life depends on it, because the feeling I am supposed to write a book just won’t go away. God put it on my heart for a reason and it is my job to do everything within my power to figure out how to do it, learn everything I can and keep trying until the feeling goes away, I get it done, or I die trying. No excuses!

What could you accomplish if you stopped making excuse and got busy trying to get it done? I believe YOU can do anything if you set your mind to it. If you want to bad enough. If you quit making excuses.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Excuse
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Fearless, Five Minute Friday, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Writing | 2 Comments on Excuse (Five Minute Friday)
November 16 2017

NaNoWriMo Progress Report

I started this as a Prep-Tober post, but then got sick near the end of October and into November with a terrible sore throat that turned into a cold. I was working 11 hours or more a day all week too. Not at all the way things were supposed to go, so on top of being sick, I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten as much planning done as I would have liked.

I missed the NaNoWeen celebration and this is always a huge boost to my word count just after midnight, but I was having trouble justifying going to an event that started at 11pm and ended at 3 am on a work night, so maybe it was just as well that I was sick.

I spent most of my reading time in September and October reading books on the craft of writing. I keep a recommended books page in my bullet journal that I can list books on when I hear about them and think I might want to read it later. Then when I am looking for something to read I search the library website and end up requesting a few to be put on hold for me. The problem with that (and it really isn’t a problem) is that often the books come in at the same time. I recently had seven books all about the writing craft come in on hold the same day. Sometimes, I will wait a couple of hours and then renew all of them to see which will be denied the renewal and then this is the book I will read first. It really is difficult to choose and most of the time I will have them on my library shelf until the library demands I bring them back because another patron is waiting to read them. Fair enough.

I tend to read a lot of books about plotting and story structure because that is where I feel the weakest currently.

Here are some of the ones I am working my way through now:

GMC: goal, motivation, and conflict: the building blocks of good fiction by Debra Dixon (The library insisted I return this since I had their only copy and someone else apparently requested it.)

Shut up & write! by Judy Bridges

So how am I doing on NaNoWriMo?

Here are my word counts by day:

Day 1: 0
Day 2: 0
Day 3: 710
Day 4: 1,111 (went to a 3-hour write-in)
Day 5: 1,762
Day 6: 2,174 (finally feeling better, but worked late)
Day 7: 2,219
Day 8: 2,971
Day 9: 2,249
Day 10: 2,070
Day 11: 2,224
Day 12: 2,614 (I finally got caught up!)
Day 13: 1,173 (trouble staying motivated)
Day 14: 1,274 (just plain tired, still behind)
Day 15: 1,686
____________________________________
Total So Far: 24,237 (should have 25,005)
Just 768 words behind where I should be.

I got off to such a slow start and was doing well consistently writing over 2,000 words a day for seven days to finally get to the word count I was supposed to have. Then I hit a slump and went below the goal of 1,667 per day and got myself slightly behind again. Don’t worry I am not giving up, just hitting the saggy middle at 20,000 words. It happens somewhere about then every year. I will get over it and write extra on the weekends if I have to.

How do you get ready for NaNoWriMo? How is your word count?

If you still need some help to stay focused but can’t go to a live write-in near you, try some of these virtual write-ins to help you stay focused. They all contain several timed writing sprints. I find these especially helpful when I keep getting sidetracked by other things instead of writing like I should be. I keep adding more to that playlist, so you may want to save the playlist to watch later by clicking the little clock in the upper right corner of the video screen shown below.

I embedded it below, so feel free to just come back here as often as you need to.

Don’t quit! I know you want to give up, but your future self will be very disappointed in you if you do. But if you stick with it right until the very end and give it your best effort, I promise your future self will be so proud of you and so will I.

Category: NaNoWriMo, Writing | Comments Off on NaNoWriMo Progress Report