Little Habits, Big Goals

I'm in a cozy fall micro-climate of constant reading and writing

National Novel Writing Month

It’s NaNoWriMo season in November, and almost 10 years after hearing about it I’m writing a novel. A big, ambitious goal that I’m excited about because it’s not necessarily about the end result, but about the formation of a habit and making writing part of my everyday life.

Here’s a sample of author Ursula K. LeGuin’s schedule, which from my perspective seems dreamy:

And here is my schedule, or a close approximation of one, for a somewhat regular weekday:

I know that writing is good for me, because after I’m done writing 1,000 words I feel like I’m ready to go on with my day. It’s not a burden, it’s exciting. I’ve been on the NaNo Seattle discord channel for a few evenings and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the supportive community. The writing sprints are very useful and just chipping at the goal bit by bit with others is exciting. However NanoWriMo’s a challege for me, because I just can’t pump out enough words per minute with just an hour and a half a day. So I’ve occasionally stayed up later doing writing sprints, but it’s hard because then I won’t awake up as early the next day.

So far I’ve also found that this big goal divided up into smaller parts is spilling over into other parts of my life, and I’m feeling more motivated to tackle things I’ve put off.

More to come on this, but I need to get my words in for today!