productivity | Black Wolf Editorial

Setting goals, devising a plan, and sticking to it. It sounds easy, but many people struggle to stick to routines—especially in the beginning. For many of us, when we start working towards a new goal and we start out well, focused on what needs to be done. Then we falter. We lose the energy to keep going, or something comes up unexpectedly to throw a spanner in the works.

There are many reasons for this, and for the most part, it all comes down to personality. Even if those routines are nicely tuned with the way we work, we still find reasons to procrastinate, avoiding what it is we should be focusing on. And it's often on a subconscious level.

Are you one that readily meets deadlines, even self-imposed ones? Or are you one that meets externally imposed deadlines but not the self-imposed ones? Or are you a person who laughs at deadlines? ("I'll do it when I feel like it." Yeah, I know people like this.)

In today's post, I want to talk about the way in which we respond to meeting our deadlines and expectations, and I want to explain why accountability is one of the best tools that writers can use to keep them on track.

I took part in my first NaNoWriMo challenge in 2014. I was still finding my feet as a fiction writer, even though I had been writing fiction since 2008. But that first NaNoWriMo, I was determined to develop my daily writing routine. Challenging myself to produce a decent word count every day seemed like a good idea.

During NaNoWriMo 2014, I hit the required 50,000 words by day 11. I had finished drafting that novel by day 16, and it clocked in at over 65,000 words—still missing all the action scenes. By the end of that month, I had written in the order of 95,000 words, scenes that formed the guts to three different novels in my high fantasy series (which is still sitting in the metaphorical drawer).

Since then, I have taken part in every single NaNoWriMo and CampNaNoWriMo event, and I am now the municipal liaison for both the Christchurch, New Zealand and the New Zealand Elsewhere regions.

Yes, I am a fan of NaNoWriMo.

But as I've become more comfortable with my writing habits, I've noticed an ethos that seems to accompany many NaNoWriMo participants that can actually be damaging to a long-term writing career.

There are some writers who take the 50,000-word-count challenge to extremes, trying to write 50,000 words in one night. No joke. In my home region of Christchurch, New Zealand, there is always at least one who forgoes sleep to achieve such a crazy feat.

In my opinion, the writers who do this are not simply crazy, but are missing the point.

The focus of NaNoWriMo has become so wrapped up in word counts that many participants seem to have lost sight of the original intention behind NaNoWriMo—to write the first draft of a novel.

It's time to shake up the word-count mindset and give renewed life to the original idea by changing the measurable goal.

Are you with me?

Tag Archives: productivity

Accountability for Writers

For NaNoWriMo, word counts or daily habits?