I did it! I wrote every single day this past week. Woohoo! 1 week down, only 51 weeks to go...
Yup, I still have a long journey ahead of me.
This also means that I'm one week into NaNoWriMo.
In past years, I've approached NaNo like a double fudge layer cake. I attack with both hands, devour it, and even when I'm getting full, I push myself to keep eating. In the end, none of my pants fit, I'm sick to my stomach, and I never want to see a chocolate cake again.
To bring this metaphor back around, I usually spend hours and hours every day in November writing ALL the words. I give up social activities, sleep, wellness care, even skip some meals. At the end, I usually have a finished draft of a novel. Which is great! But also, it's a terrible, terrible draft (meaning I end up rewriting almost every word later), and I'm so burnt out and exhausted from the intense amount of writing that I don't write a single word the whole month of December.
Since I'm planning to write every day for an entire year, I didn't want to get burned out this month. At the beginning of the week, I decided to pace myself and not aim for the NaNo daily goal (1,667 words), but I still wanted to hit high (1,000+) word counts every day.
That definitely did not happen. I mean, not even close, which you'll be able to see from the table below.
My week turned out to be busier that usual. I had to work some extra hours. The election happened. I had an outdoor family get together on Saturday. Life happened this past week, just like it will probably happen most weeks.
But that's okay!
Looking back, I realized that I set unrealistic writing goals for myself. I expected NaNo to push me to write more than usual. I expected to start out my Year of Writing project with a bigger bang. None of that happened.
But I still wrote every day. I wrote every single day!
Who cares that it wasn't as much as I wanted?! I need to be proud of what I accomplished, of the words that got out of my head and into my manuscript. My story is closer to being completed than it was a week ago. And that's awesome!
Now, onto the numbers:
(Quick aside: I totally forgot to keep track of my time in the beginning of the week. I promise to keep better track from now on.)
My mood regarding the past week: Pleasantly pleased
My mood for this coming week: High spirited
Other insights: Distractions were a huge factor this week. I think I did a so-so job cutting out distractions while I wrote, but I know that had I focused more, I would've been able to squeeze out a couple hundred more words.
Also on a few days, I wrote first thing in the morning, sans phone, which I've never really done before. It was great, and I'm hoping to do this more this week!
That's it for now. Happy creating to all my writerly wizards!
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