Monday, November 5, 2012

A "Month"* in "Writing"**

So, as many of you undoubtedly know, this is National Novel Writing Month (popularly known as NaNoWriMo), which people have transformed into "poetry writing" and "blogging" and "digital writing" and any other damn thing. And we academics... well, we're just trying to crank out an article or a conference paper or something.

And I swear, I've been working on it, but there have been obstacles, not the least of which is that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I started over at Dame Eleanor's with a goal to get an article draft hammered out. But considering that it took me three full weeks to meet the relatively modest one-week (ha!) goal of finishing one last book on Big Background and then write 300 words on that topic, I've decided to revise my goal.

To wit: I'm chucking the damn goal, and just working.

I'm going to try to observe NaNoWriMo in my own way, by working 90 minutes a day on this project. And if that translates into me writing 500 new words, then yippee!  If it translates into me reading an article and taking two pages of notes on them (which is what I did today), then that's also good.

Most of all, I'm going to try to be accountable for each of these days, for the next four weeks (And yes, I will insert some non-writing-content in here, too.). Of course, I said something about that back in my first-ever post on this blog, then realized it was a dumb thing to say. But since no one has the authority to fire me from my own blog, what have I got to lose?


Just lay out the damn pattern and follow it.


*Not really a full month, since I'm starting five days into it.
**Not always writing new words; just working on stuff that will become writing; rebuilding my writing habit.

9 comments:

Dame Eleanor Hull said...

Here to cheer you on! Go, writing habit!

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Thanks, Dame E. I've kind of sucked out loud over at your place. But the key is to keep showing up.

Anonymous said...

I do better with time goals than word number goals. I often get pleasantly surprised!

Historiann said...

Notorious and nicoleandmaggie: good idea to use the time goal. I will try it too.

undine said...

I'm thinking about time goals, too, because the word count discourages editing and rewriting, when that's often the start of more writing.

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