Weekly Post: November and Writing

Every November I attempt to complete the National Novel Writing Month challenge of 50’000 words. This post is not about how to complete it. It is literally my 5th attempt at doing so. While, I will say I have improved each year, it is nowhere near bragging about. This post is about redeclaring my commitment. 

It is hard to keep motivated when life seems to be encroaching. I do not think about the 50’000 words. I think about just doodling out a new character sheet or writing that one sentence that sounded very cool in my head. “You can’t outrun it, can you?” says a yet unnamed and unknown character. I want to know them now. They will have a name I declare, as I open babynames.com. 

Timelines have been fun to create. I am that girl that loves to use highlighters and stickers. But I can easily avoid looking at my very intricate and colorful calendar. I have even used digital calendars to send me reminders. However, when I would get the calendar notification that reads “write now” as task, I can’t help but be offended and outraged. My past self did not take into consideration that my future self was sensitive to tone. I would promptly ignore the task that these apps would send me and dance to anything from Rage Against the Machine. This was procrastination in artistic dance form (disclaimer: no one has ever described my dancing as that). 

I will say that I am a sucker for alliteration. Organizing my daily writing by alliteration was been pretty successful. I’ve been inspired by Tumblr and fan fiction writers to make my days into events. To clarify, instead of filling my calendar with “write now”, I now have “Flirty Fridays” for example. 

It does take more work to alliterate, but my deadlines now inspire me and makes it easier to slip into work. What has worked for you? Or not worked for that matter?

These are a couple more graphics I’ve thrown together to help with the rest of this week: