NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 3

Four hours of writing two days in a row, and I’m feeling it today! I slogged through a rough 650 word session early this afternoon, and kept putting off doing a second session through the afternoon and early evening. Finally I got back on after dinner and hammered through another thousand words, which felt much easier. I’m calling it good with only two and a quarter hours today — I met minimum word count, even if not 70k word count 😉

You know how they say don’t start running by running a 5k every day? NaNo is that for writing.* But at least you’re doing it alongside thousands of others 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️

I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again,** but breaking my brain back into intense daily writing is absolutely training. Writing is a heavy brain-draw, and even with building up my work endurance during Preptober, I have to adjust to go from writing nothing to writing two thousand words a day. It’s a balance of listening to my body and recognizing when I need rest and when it’s just resistance. Today was a little of both. (And I’m sure it didn’t help that I slept kinda crappy last night. NaNo is an important time to take care of your body!)

* There are some things about NaNo that I think are great for new writers, but I also sometimes worry that it’s harmful to people who it doesn’t work for. I don’t want people to feel bad and quit writing if the binge approach isn’t for them. (There’s probably something toxic “suffering for your art” mentality in this style of just do it.) There would be something to be said for stretching it out over a longer time period and starting with writing a sentence, then a paragraph, then a page, and working up to 2k words a day. Frankly, that would be a much healthier approach to building a healthy writing habit than NaNo, which is something that I (and many of my writing friends) have struggled with over the years. Hmmm…. Page Zero to 2k 🤔 I think this is actually a good idea…. that I really don’t have time for 😂

** Depending how this month goes, in the future I may be trying to work more intensive writing into my life throughout the year, rather than during one annual marathon.