Three Houses Press has challenged resident authors Grace Barnes and Meg Hayes to take on Nanowrimo. Every Tuesday, they will share their progress, expressing their successes, failures, and lessons learned.
Grace Barnes
You know things aren’t going to go well when you kind of forget November 1st is… you know… November 1st.
Over the weekend, life happened. Life always happens; it is a poor excuse, but not one lacking validity. As writers, specifically those who push the hobby forward as a career, we constantly argue that you need to put your writing first. But, when it comes down to it, even the best of us know that there are other things that come first. This weekend, my family took priority. Not the sort of fun family stuff that becomes immortalized in pictures to hang on the walls, but the sort of family stuff that makes you cringe and take a step back to wonder what went wrong, when it went wrong, and how much wine you’ll need to make it feel better.
An evening family dinner, followed by a night of writing, snowballs into a late night of questions, arguments, and compromises. A sweet Sunday of coffee, writing, and football becomes acting on those compromises, growing that snowball into an ice castle as you call friends for support, change your plans, and try not to make things any worse.
We can’t always write. Nanowrimo is founded on an expectation that we are stable human beings, capable of going 30 days with nothing going wrong, leaving us with the time and mental energy to churn out 1,667 words. If you are the type of person who has gone that many days with nothing going wrong in your life, then we need to talk so you can share your secrets. I would take a week and be grateful.
This is all a really fancy and round-about way of sharing that I have allocated exactly 0 words to Nanowrimo as of the time of this publication. That will be changing, or that is at least the plan. We will see. You never know what the day will bring.
Follow Grace’s Journey on Nanowrimo!
Meg Hayes
Ahhhh Nanowrimo week one. Cue the exasperated Ursula gif. I wish I could say I’m being productive, that Nanowrimo was the kick in the butt I needed to stay on track and finish this manuscript, but I can’t. I have not met my goal even once thus far. I’m trying hard not to feel like a failure, but I really hate not achieving goals.
As much as I hate to rely on excuses, writing is not my only job. However, I do have a plan to increase my productivity. Beginning on November 5th, I will start waking up an hour earlier than my normal time in order to give myself a full hour of writing before I have to get ready for work. This is going to be a huge challenge for me since I’m a night owl by nature and I loathe mornings. Ultimately, my hope is that by developing and adhering to a schedule I can increase my productivity.
I’ll report back next week to see if this new plan has yielded better results. Until next time, keep writing…or at least try to write.
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