Further thoughts on goal setting and achieving. Why am I thinking about this? Why now and not a week before New Year’s Eve or three weeks after December 31st when our resolutions have been broken and tossed in the bin?
Because a week from today we begin NANOWRIMO. Don’t know what it is? Check it out – this is an awesome program for writers, National Novel Writing Month. Where everyone goes crazy trying to write a full 50,000 word book in the month of November. Here’s the link. Signing up for free gets you some wonderful, encouraging newsletters, some cool tracking tools, and fun contact with other writers, both online or in person in your area.
Now some people enter NANO without a clue as to what to write. The founder of the program, Chris Baty, even wrote a book on it – No Plot? No Problem. But having done NANO a few years now, I know the truth is – you need a plan. You need to know what you are going to write. Have a synopsis at least. And just as importantly, you need to know WHEN you are going to write. You need to get almost 1700 words a day on paper to win. And you want to win, right?
Most Nano’ers find their biggest problem wasn’t that they couldn’t find time, or that they couldn’t write. It was after a while, they couldn’t fight the urge to go back and edit, eating up their valuable writing time and as they inevitably changed the plot along with their grammar, they ruined their understanding of what to write next. Goodbye plan.
So, if you plan to write in NANOWRIMO, decide now – what you will write (lay it out a little), when you will write, and that you will not back up and edit. Make your goals. If you do nothing else by participating, you will create a habit of writing every day. That’s your goal.
Nancy
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