Stats
Week 11 Average Daily Wordcount: 2667
Week 11 Total Wordcount: 18,670
November Total Wordcount: 46,228
Year Total Wordcount: 237,792
Words to go:
November: 37,106
Year: 762,208
If you haven’t been following my blog, you may want to start with the explanation of what Milwordy is here: My Milwordy Declaration and Milwordy: Which Words Count?.
I had several days this week where I did not hit my Milwordy word count goal. These were not planned breaks. These were simply days where I didn’t get it done.
On one of these days, I did work pretty late and I don’t feel too bad about missing out on that day. It happens. I’m sure it will happen more as the year goes on. But as for the other days…I don’t have a good reason to have slacked off. The only real excuse I have to offer is that, I haven’t built in rest days this month and I can see how that may have been a mistake. My daily word counts have, in general been lower this month even when I’m hitting my goal. That means I need to hit my goal nearly every day to make this work. And I think that’s a bit unreasonable to expect.
Rest days seem to happen whether I plan them or not. My brain will not allow me to do the most every single day, so I need to plan for these lapses ahead of time by getting more words in on the days I am feeling most productive.
Fortunately, my plan of getting ahead in my word count, both at the start of this month, and at the start of Milwordy in September, has given me a nice buffer and I’m still quite a bit ahead. That lead can vanish quickly though, if I’m not careful, so it’s important for me to stay on track.
The days I got the most words were the days that I allowed myself to do some brainstorming for a new project that I’m just developing. When I’m working on that, writing seems nearly effortless. Instead of forcing myself to sit down and hit that word count, I end up having to force myself to stop writing so I can attend to the other necessities in life like, you know, eating, working, sleeping etc. It’s times like that when I remember what I love about writing. I wish every moment of writing could be like that, but sadly it doesn’t work that way. If I want to finish the things I start, I can’t just write when the words are flowing easy. I have to write all the time.
So, what have I learned this week?
NaNo makes Milwordy harder, not easier, which is the opposite of what I expected. I believe I have talked about this before, but having to stick to just one project (or mostly to just one project), feels confining to me. But more than that, I’ve found my brain naturally reforming its expectations to the 1,667 daily NaNo word goal rather than the 2,740 Milwordy goal. If I get to 1,667, I always sort of feel like I’ve done enough, even though I know that’s not true. I can’t get through Milwordy like that. Yet, I can’t get my stubborn brain to accept that fact and I’ve started to get, a little lazy.
As I already said, I’ve also learned that rest days are vital and even though I think I can just skip them, in reality, I can’t
And finally, I’ve learned that committing to an imperfect project is better than seeking out the perfect project and never finding it.
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-Robin
Rambling Robin 