Thus we come to the subject of the title: timing. It seems I always start things either too late or too early. I have 'breakfast' at lunchtime, I start writing a handful more stories before I've finished one, and I don't really know how to pace myself. I manage it, sometimes, but it takes real effort. I think time just doesn't exist, because some things seem like they literally happened only a few months ago, when they really happened years ago. Other things feel like they were a week ago when they were yesterday. Time is a jumble in my head.
Which is kind of why NaNo was so great for me last year, despite starting a few days late: I had to pace myself. Marathon, not sprint. I had to make myself be okay with occasionally not hitting the average word goal, that impassive diagonal line through the graph where x is days and y is words written and x=(1666.66)y, because I knew that if I at least hit my own personal word goal, I'd be around 50k by the end of the month, even if my average slope was a bit steeper than everyone else's, and my x-intercept had a higher value than the rest.
And it worked. Amazingly, I won. Despite still tying my shoes when the starter pistol fired, I made it.
A month or so back, I decided to do a thirty-day exercise routine. (Pushups and planks, neither of which I'm particularly great at; I was in ballet as a kid, not gymnastics! I liked playing soccer and hated basketball. I don't know how I can draw and change my handwriting when I can barely toss a Kleenex into a trash can. It's like my hand-eye coordination is fine, but my arms want nothing to do with it.) Because I'm somewhat scatter-brained on the best days, I decided it was best to start it on the first of a month. Then the calendar would tell me what day of the routine I was on. But, thought I, that would mean I would have to wait until November to do the exercises, and if I hadn't thought about it in over a month, I knew I was probably going to forget about it. It's happened before, a shameful number of times.
Then my friend suggested something genius: doing the routine during the first thirty days of October, and then celebrating with some well-earned candy, sweets, and snacks on Halloween. Why I didn't think of this, I don't know. But if I did that, then I'd have enough time to get myself excited about improving my pushups and planks (I'm majorly lacking in upper body strength, probably due to genetically bad shoulders), but not enough time to completely forget about it.
(And before you think I'm a gym rat or something, please know that the pushups I'm doing are terrible, but I'm supplementing them with hips-on-the-floor cobra pushups so I know I'm doing something to strengthen my upper-body muscles. The plan is currently to try again next month with focus on proper pushup form because I never actually learned how to do them right. How far should the hands be from each other? What angle should my elbows be at? I have no idea. But I digress.)
I logged back in on the NaNoWriMo website toward the beginning of October because I was so excited to start planning my novel. Then I realized that I don't know how to plan everything out before writing anything. Last year, and with my first finished novel, I world-built as I wrote, ending up with a near-constant stream of creativity and about thirty tabs open in Chrome at a time. (Plus about a dozen incognito tabs for research. Oops.) This year, as I'm trying to plan, I keep coming up with ideas, sure, but as soon as I get the ideas, I want to write the scene. Writing scenes is much easier for me than writing about scenes. I feel like I started warming up an hour before the race started. (I've never actually raced anyone. I am frail and flimsy; that's why I'm a writer instead of an athlete!) I'm worried that I'll run out of motivation halfway through November, or worse, before November actually comes around.
Which brings us to my grand challenge, and why (I think) it failed before it had a chance. Here's what happened: I needed to write down a dream I had; I wrote it down; I had more ideas; I wrote those down, too; before I knew it, I had 1667 words already! That's an average day's goal for NaNo! And I wasn't even done! If I could follow that trend, I would be in a habit by the time NaNo officially started and hitting the word goal every day wouldn't be a problem! Just like the exercising, just like brushing my teeth, just like doing dishes, it would be a habit instead of a chore. I would have momentum. It would be easier to do it than to justify to myself why I could get away with not doing it.
But, right out the starting gate, I fumbled. (That's probably a mixed metaphor. I'll admit: I don't care. Like I said, I'm not an athlete. I'm keeping it.) I thought of other things I needed to do. Things that couldn't (or at least shouldn't) be put off any longer. Things that I needed to do, rather than just things I wanted to do. I realized that I wanted to write every day during the last two weeks of October, but I needed to get my online presence up and running. It was more than a year past-due! Having them set up would give me more things to give the agents I query, and maybe even a way for agents to find me instead of me finding them. (A grand delusion, perhaps, but I believe writers require some delusion in order to be successful.)
Also, I got sick. I blame my roommates. If they didn't go out and deal with people in the real world while the seasons are changing, maybe I could have avoided this whole nastiness with my hermit ways. But, alas. What happened, happened. And even if I didn't write any fiction over those few days, I did manage to get a pretty good theme set up on my Tumblr (it looks weird to capitalize that). So I suppose I can feel productive, even if I didn't write words.
That's something I tell other people all the time. Writing new words is great, but it's not the only way to be productive. Planning and prepping and plotting and recharging and all those necessary things are sometimes required so you can write tomorrow. It's productive, even if it doesn't up your word count. It's not a waste just because you didn't write anything.
In fact, I'm going to reiterate that in big, bold, italicized letters.
A day is not wasted just because you didn't write any new words in your story.
Word count is not the only measurement of productivity.
And besides, I didn't just do coding and playing with colors (though I did do a lot of that). I also made 100-150 word synopses for each of my six current projects (including the one that's already finished and the one I'll start writing on November 1), which is nothing to sneeze at. (Speaking of sneezing, I'm really annoyed at all the sneezing I've been doing today. I know it can't continue, but it already feels like I've been sniffling and sneezing forever. I digress.) Beyond that, I think the synopses are actually pretty good! Not to blow my own horn, but I used to take a couple weeks to write the perfect 200 words, and now I'm at the point of making four entirely from scratch in a single day! I guess doing that first one really helped. I'm... actually looking forward to being able to query these works??? What madness is this!?
(Also, it occurs to me that most bloggers probably don't put so many parenthetical asides in their blog posts. Maybe that's part of my neurodivergence? Who knows.)
Anyway, this little blog of mine will probably get more regular content come November, when I actually have a real routine. I already have grand plans: wake up, exercise, shower if needed, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, write to the word goal (taking a fifteen minute break every forty-five minutes if needed), and then only checking social media after I've met the word goal for the day. And if I write two days' worth, maybe I'll write a blog post. Maybe I'll copy one of my more rambling NaNo forum posts and edit it into a blog post. I have some good things to say, I think, and if it helps one person, maybe it will help another.
Anyway. (Another thing I do too much of: starting thoughts with 'so' and 'anyway' and 'also'. Glad this doesn't happen too much in my writing... or at least I hope it doesn't. And oh, look, another digression!) I don't know what I'm doing with this whole 'sound like a professional writer' thing, and I certainly don't know how to manage a whole mess of accounts on different platforms... I think you're supposed to share links to things on other things? I'm sure I'll figure it out.
Let's just say I'm looking forward to having the problem of having too many people commenting on things to ever be able to reply to all of them.
Fair winds and following seas, friends.
-dal
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