NaNoWriMo has not been easy for me, but I knew that would be the case. That was actually one of the reasons that I wanted to do it this year.
They key for me was finding time. I work long hours at a “9-to-5” and then I am generally too tired to do much else when I get home. My brain function by that point is at a minimum. I have found that writing on the train on the way to work has been the best for me. I tune out the world, the crushing bodies and the end-of-the-world practitioners to write about 1,000 words in the morning.
It’s the rest of the day I have a hard time getting to a keyboard.
Yet as I look back on these first 10 days, there have been moments where I could have worked on my manuscript. Like when I decided to spend four hours playing video games on Sunday. That was a good 2,000 words that never got written. Instead, I decided those demons weren’t going to kill themselves and played Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Tip #2: Put down the joystick.
The joystick could be anything in this case: television, dance class, Legos or even reading a book.
The purpose of NaNoWriMo is to write. The key is finding those things that you could sacrifice for a month to get your story down. It doesn’t even need to be good yet because December is national editing month as far as I am concerned.
I currently sit at 6,500 words — a far cry from where I’m supposed to be right now. I don’t like the look of that chart.
So for the rest of the month, the people of Ferelden are going to have to fight the dark spawn on their own.
I got a book to write.
This is why I have almost no games installed on my work computer, and why I store my tablets outside my office. It reduces the temptation to play games.
Now if only I could maintain similar control over tv shows ans movies, that would be great.
The world is my office 🙂 (which is probably part of the problem.)