Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron.
Ezra Cornell
Those in the writing world that haven’t hit it big, and even some people outside that sphere, may know about NaNoWriMo. It’s a community-driven event put together by a particular group which is meant to encourage writers to put a huge amount of effort into creating something new. The goal is fifty-thousand words during the month, or, more specifically, sixteen-hundred and sixty-seven a day. This is obviously easier for some, but when I took the challenge a few years back I found it incredibly challenging. That, coupled with the fact that November has Thanksgiving, my birthday, and my anniversary, made trying to carve out the hours I needed every day a daunting task which was ultimately more trouble than it was worth on a personal level.
Cut to this year. November loomed on the horizon and I found I had the itch to pick things up again. To stop dawdling and do something – to quit being a bitch, as it were. Right around the time I found the itch returning, my Twitter timeline was filled with aspiring authors losing their collective minds on the organization that runs NaNoWriMo over their new outlook on AI. Namely, that AI was a perfectly viable writing tool to meet the criteria for the competition. I shouldn’t really need to go into too much detail as to why that’s moronic. That, coupled with the extreme level of rust I’m going to need to grind off and the fact that November is really just one of the worst months for me to do this, led to me deciding to make my own, personal NaNoWriMo.
What does that entail? In the simplest terms, five or six chapters. Internally, I have Residuum divided into four parts, and my editing at the moment is on part two. I’d like to set the goal to do that entire part’s rewrite – and this ultimately might – but I don’t quite know when I’m ending it during this pass so I want to leave something more concrete for the target. Knocking out chapters twelve through sixteen or seventeen. This puts me on a clock of slightly more than a chapter a week which, if I can get myself into middling working order, will be doable even with all these other plans. Challenging, yes, but doable. The challenge is sort of the point.
All I really need to do is get back to the process that made it all work before. Get up early, put in the work, exercise, crush the nine-to-five, eat well, have family time, get the proper amount of sleep. You know, generally good being-human things. Stop allowing the trash to take precedence over what’s needed. Discipline. Certainly something I’m better at talking about than sticking with, but the time for excuses is long past over and, again, I just need to quit being a bitch.
And, so, the grind begins again tomorrow. Bright and early. I hope these fingers are ready, I’ve got a love interest to introduce. If they’re not, oh well. They’re getting to work regardless.
Until next week, my lovely Dwellers. By then, I’ll be showing up with a chapter (and hopefully more) under my belt.
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