#who wants to see my nanowrimo graphs when i finish the challenge | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nanowrimo · 6 years

Text

Succeed with These S.M.A.R.T. Camp NaNo Goals

Camp NaNoWriMo is just around the corner! If you’re a first-time camper, welcome! If you’re a returning camper, welcome back! Everyone needs a clear set of writing goals in order to succeed; today, writer Marissa O’Leary shares a SMART tool for making your Camp adventure great:

Camp NaNo is all about choices: Will you participate in April or July (or both)? Will your goal be in pages or hours? Poetry or novel? Cabin or solo? It can be so hard to decide!

One thing I love about Camp NaNo is how much freedom you’ve got. All the power is in your hands: you decide what your project will be and what your writing target is for it. This can be both awesome and overwhelming. As you spend this month thinking about what you will write, consider some other aspects: how much writing you’re going to challenge yourself to do and why you’ll definitely be able to achieve this amazing feat.

An effective tool for focusing your writing goal is by creating “SMART” goals. “SMART” is an acronym that you may have heard of in school or in a work training program. Applying it to something you’re passionate about (like your writing, for instance) helps you learn this useful technique in a fun and memorable way. Here’s what “SMART” stands for and how you can apply each step to your writing:

Specific

First, your goal needs to be Specific. Luckily, the Camp Nano program makes this really easy for you. You know specifically what you want to do. You’re going to write a novel. Or a comic book. Or a collection of short stories! Even if you don’t exactly know all the details of who your characters will be, what they’re going to do, or what their conflicts are going to be, the fact that you are going to commit yourself to sitting down at your notebook, typewriter, voice recorder, or computer to craft a story is specific enough.

Measurable

Next, your goal needs to be Measurable. How much are you going to write? Are you going to spend two hours a day? Or write forty-thousand words? You can choose your target and adjust it as necessary. Then, you can chart your progress. I’m super competitive so there’s nothing I love more than seeing the little bars on my graph exceed that diagonal line!

Achievable

Is it Achievable? Of course it is! However, if you’re starting to doubt yourself or need a little bit of emotional support, you can join a cabin of writers to chat with. I’ve really enjoyed my experiences with my cabin because I moved to a new country and didn’t always have many people to talk to. My cabin-mates were a virtual support group both for my move and for my writing.

Relevant

Fourth, your goal needs to be Relevant. You may wonder how writing a fantasy romance story between a rich baroness and a poor peasant farmer relates at all to your life in the real world. This is the time to remind yourself that pursuing your passion is always worthwhile and relevant to your life. Use this month to take an hour or so out of each day to craft your own mythical realm, torture an evil dictator (that may or may not resemble your boss at work), or help your hero to hatch a brilliantly executed heist.

Timely

Last, it needs to be timely—in other words, you need to follow your schedule. If you’re doing Camp in April you’ve got thirty days; in July, thirty-one. Having a time frame keeps you accountable to your deadlines and acts as a great finish line for you to victoriously pursue.

Put all together, you’re able to commit to the goal of writing that perfect project. You believe you can do it, you believe you should do it, and you’ve got a month to prove it! Good luck!

Marissa O’Leary is an aspiring writer from Florida. Her favorite color is purple; her favorite book is Slaughterhouse Five, and her favorite sport is soccer. When she’s procrastinating from writing she likes to knit while watching Netflix or listening to podcasts. She studied Chinese in college and has been living in Hong Kong for the past two years with her husband and her cat, Yuki, who you can follow on Instagram at @yuki_the_goblin.

#camp nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #writer #smart #by nano guest #marissa o'leary

109 notes · View notes

mandelene · 6 years

Text

What Doing NaNoWriMo Taught Me

1) The impossible is possible. I often joke with my friends that I’m a binge-writer. I don’t normally write every single day. I wait for the weekend to come and then devote an entire Saturday or Sunday to writing about 5k-10k words. NaNoWriMo forced me to make time every day to write 1667 words, and that was the biggest challenge for me -- consistency and perseverance. I would come home from class at 6:30 and feel too tired to do anything else, but I still had to make time to write, even if it meant staying up until 2 AM. Even when I wasn’t feeling well or I had already written a bunch of stuff for school, I sat down to write and tried to type out at least a couple of words each day. I fell short of my daily word count a few times, but I would just write twice as much the next day. All in all, the graph of my progress stayed pretty consistent though, and that’s what I’ve been most proud of. I didn’t make any excuses this month. I wrote even when I felt like it was impossible and my brain couldn’t put together any sentences, and I found that even when I thought I couldn’t write, I could. Not once did I feel inspired. Each day was like pushing a wheelbarrow filled with rocks up a hill, and it didn’t get any easier like I thought it would. Each day was just as hard as the previous one, but I didn’t let that stop me. 2) There’s always time.

I thought I wouldn’t have time to write every day. That was a lie I was feeding myself for a long time. You can always make time. I wrote a good chunk of my novel this month on the bus, in between classes, in coffee shops while having lunch with friends, or in the middle of the night. I sacrificed sleep and made myself get out of my comfort zone. So much of our day is wasted on idle time--waiting for a bus or train, sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for class to start, sitting in the back of a car, etc. I utilized every minute of the day for writing, and when I wasn’t writing, I was reading about writing. 3) If you want something, you have to chase after it.

Writing is a very solitary and dull act. Most of the time, it’s hell and not as magical as non-writers think it is. Even when you’re writing well, it feels like what Stephen King always describes as “shoveling shit from a sitting position,” but being a writer forces you to accept this and keep going anyway. Nothing gets handed to you. If you want to write a novel, at some point, you have to sit down, commit to it, and write. Again, no excuses. Otherwise, life keeps passing you by and you wander around in this gray middle ground where you can always see your dreams in the distance, but you can never touch and hold them. No one is going to be there to write for you or to give you the magic formula for getting it right. You have to shut yourself in your room sometimes for hours on end and just do it.

4) I’ll never be satisfied.

So, I wrote over 50,000 words this month. Sure, I’m happy about it and proud of myself on some level, but the story isn’t done yet, and I’m not totally satisfied. I think a lot of the scenes I wrote were lackluster, and the novel as a whole is going to take a heck of a lot of editing. I thought I’d finish NaNoWriMo and finally feel accomplished as an aspiring writer, but that hasn’t been the case. I still feel this itch and nagging to keep going -- to see it through to the end and write multiple follow-up drafts until this aching in my chest stops and everything sounds like it should. I always want more, even once I’ve done what I’ve set out to do, and I hate myself for putting myself through this masochism. I know it’s a good quality to have, but it’s draining, and I wish I could give myself a week away from my novel and rest, but I know I’m not going to be able to relax until it’s officially done and I’ve got at least an 80,000-word novel.

5) When you feel broken inside, that’s when you know you’re doing it right. I officially finished NaNoWriMo at 2:36 AM on November 30. I decided to stay up on Wednesday and get it over with because I didn’t want to put myself through the struggle of worrying throughout the entirety of Thursday about whether or not I was going to finish on time. I’m the type of person who likes to rip the band-aid off (it’s a gift and a curse). The last scene I wrote was intense -- the most heartbreaking scene of the novel thus far, and halfway through it, I burst into tears because I was exhausted, and I was battling all of the emotions going through my head as I was typing. Something amazing happened in that moment. I felt like I was there, standing on the porch and seeing what my protagonist was seeing. I was there, in my slippers, with the cold night air biting at my skin and my eyes burning from the sting of bright lights cutting through the darkness. I felt the helplessness of the moment as the weight of the night sky pressed down upon me. It sounds silly, but that’s how I know I’m getting somewhere and that I’ve tapped into something in my writing -- when I’m either grinning and feeling euphoric with my characters or when I cry with them. It’s only happened to me a handful of times, and each time, I’m left stunned by it. It was the first time my novel felt truly real to me -- like I could go to that very street and meet those characters in person, and they would be tangible people with complicated lives and hopes and dreams. 6) You’re more powerful than you think. A week ago (around day 22), I let my friend read the first chapter of my novel because I was dying for feedback at that point. I trusted her to give me critical feedback because she’s never said nice things just to placate me before, and she’s not afraid to tell me when something sucks. The first thing she said after reading it was, “Wow, you have some pretty incredible characters here. You need to slow down and give them the time they deserve because wow, just wow.” I know world-building and description/imagery are my weaknesses, and oftentimes, because of that, my writing can sound a little monotone and dull if I don’t actively go back and fix it. I’ve also always known that dialogue is one of my strengths, but NaNoWriMo helped me see what I can do with a whole new set of characters made from scratch. I wasn’t writing pre-made characters given to me by a fandom. They were my characters, and I fell in love with them. I’m so happy to have accomplished that. It was a powerful discovery. 7) This is what I’m meant to be doing.

This is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again. It’s also something I’m often in denial about. Knowing you want to be a writer is a scary thing because you know it means you’re going to face a lot of rejection, heartbreak, and disappointment. Most writers never make a sustainable career out of their work -- they have to have a side job. When writing gets hard sometimes, I think about what it would be like to have chosen a more practical career path. I could have gone to medical school like my parents initially wanted me to, and I could’ve lived a comfortable life, never having to worry about how to support myself. My future would have been safe and certain. I could have been anything else, and it probably would have worked out fine, but I chose to be a writer because I want my life to be more than fine and liveable -- I want it to be meaningful and full of passion and drive, even if that means it’s going to take a lot of tears and pain to get there. As I get nearer and nearer toward graduating college, I get more and more terrified that I’ll never be able to be independent and provide for myself. NaNoWriMo made me face the harsh reality of the path I’ve chosen, but I don’t regret my choices, even when I have my moments of doubt. And if I fail, I fail, but I’ll have failed knowing I put my heart into being more than just another person trying to survive life. There’s more to life than a good job and money. There’s love, and joy, and fulfillment, and family, and friends, and walking out onto the street and feeling like flying because it’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining and everything feels like it’s going to be okay. It’s laughing so hard you want to cry and crying so hard you want to laugh. It’s hearing a soothing song, and writing a poem, and growing up, and losing yourself but finding yourself, too. It’s about being confused. It’s about the tenacity of the human spirit even in the face of great adversity. It’s about pain and tears but also warm arms holding you as you lean on someone who loves you. It’s coming home after being away for a long time. It’s standing up for what you believe in and fighting for what’s right. It’s empathy and letting people into your heart. It’s everything that makes us human and fallible. And one day, it’ll be over -- for all of us -- and when it’s over, how much monetary value your life had won’t matter. It’ll just be gone, and your life will be a series of memories by which others remember you by. I don’t want people to remember me as someone who didn’t follow her dreams and followed the straightest path through life in order to be comfortable. I want to be uncomfortable. I want to be challenged. I want to be sad. I want to feel pain. I want to go through all of these things because I want to experience all my life has to offer. And so, I’m going to keep writing -- never satisfied, but never stopping either because I’ll always be yearning for more from myself.

#nanowrimo #nano 2017 #winner #life lesson #writing

5 notes · View notes