The Post Nanowrimo World

(The Nanowrimo website is not allowing updates to word counts anymore, so I switched formats on my blog to allow me to add a word count widget so I will stay accountable towards my goal of 50k words on Peasant and Enjoyable (Working title for my book. Plot is kind of like Clerks meets Narnia). Let me know if the new format doesn't work for you!)

I love Nanowrimo, but as I predicted, I failed this year, but not for lack of trying. I doubled up my efforts early in the month with the hope of reaching 50k by November 25th (Cleo's initial arrival date) and despite getting massively sick and having a baby early, I still reached 30,000 words. I love the camaraderie of Wrimo, I love the challenge, and I love having that word count goal getting knocked out of the park every night.

The downside of Wrimo, though, is that I'm not sure how well it does with establishing healthy writing habits.

I believe this man was the winner.

Consider the Bicycle Commute Challenge I recently participated in. I bike to work nearly every day, about 4 out of every 5. During the BCC, though, you tracked your miles and frequency of biking for a month. So it became 5 days a week, regardless of weather or health. This was in the peak of fall soccer season, mind you, so I was playing 90 minute games on the weekend and, in order to keep my perfect commute record, I would bike from work to futsal, play 1-2 futsal games, then bike from futsal to home.

It wasn't a huge change for me, but four weeks of me pushing on regardless of what signs and hints my body gave me over the month was significant. I ended up with an injury at the end of the month. Thankfully it was only a small injury, but I ended up missing the last 4 days of the Commute Challenge and a soccer game.

What WAS concerning, though, was how long it took me to get back to biking 4 days a week!  For the entire month of October, I biked maybe 2 days a week. I had gone too far and burnt myself out. It wasn't until Cleo was born and I needed to go back to biking for financial reasons that I transitioned back to 4 days a week.

Not my problem if you can't type one-handed Dad.

So it has been with Wrimo. I was clocking about 2k words a day for early November. My goal currently is about 500 words per day.  Much more reasonable.  Much healthier and saner for me.

And damn near impossible lately!

Obviously there are constraints to writing with a newborn (that's a post for another day), but when I do find the time, it's harder to sit down to write. All that white space between writing sessions gets filled in with doubts and insecurities, too, so that it become harder to sit down again the next time.

Anyhow, I'm hoping that progress bar in the top right corner will help me keep going. Feel free to drop me a line if you see it hasn't moved in a while!