NaNoWriMo (the shortened name for National Novel Writing Month) begins November 1st. I wasn’t planning to join this year, but I realized this week that (for several reasons), I had lost momentum on my novel since coming home from England.
So what better way to get back in the writing habit pronto than joining NaNoWriMo again? It’s worked for me in the past, and it’s free!
Instead of explaining what NaNoWriMo involves and how to prepare for it, I will point you to a previous post that should answer many questions. Exploring the NaNoWriMo website will answer the rest. If you need a shot in your writing arm, or a kick in the pants, there’s hardly a better way to get you writing a lot than NaNoWriMo.
Is NaNoWriMo For Me?
Here’s a good overview of the November event, including all the “extras” you get when you sign up (pep talks by famous writers, an archive of pep talks dating back to 2007, three free writing-focused classes with handouts to help you prepare for November, and much more!)
However, PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT running a challenge group this year. The challenge mentioned in the older article was just for that year. Even though I’m not running a challenge or accountability group this year, I may team up with one other person to hold me accountable. Sharing the struggle and the victory is always sweeter with a writing friend.
Back in college, I had a friend who lamented, “If only I could run on my stomach!”
She loved to run, never missed a day, and had thighs of steel. She also loved to eat, never missed a snack, and had a stomach like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. If only she could apply her running skills to her eating problem!
Actually, she could have. And you can make better use of your own good habits, applying those skills to your writing. You can transfer some good habits from one area of your life and apply them to an area where you want to be more consistent—like your writing.
The “successful role model” in the Jack Canfield quote above could easily be YOU.
Who, Me?
“But I don’t have self-discipline in anything!” you might say. You may feel that way, but it’s probably not true. Don’t believe me? Think about something you’re good at. Next, write down five or six habits you practice regularly that make you successful in this area. (Can be anything: running races, keeping a clean house, raising children who are kind to each other, keeping your weight stable through the holidays…anything.)
I Don’t Think About It
Perhaps you said, “Well, I was a good student” or “I learned to play the piano,” but you’re not sure what habits made you successful. If that’s the case, pretend that someone approached you and said, “I’d love to be as self-disciplined as you are with your (fitness, music, housekeeping, whatever). Tell me how you do it!” Then make a list of what you do. Which of those habits can you transfer over to your writing life and make them work for you?
The habits that help you lose weight or be fit or run a business might include:
having a support system
keeping a written record (of food eaten, miles run, income/expenses)
setting very small, sustainable daily goals
journaling through successes and failures
monitoring self-talk to counter-act negative thoughts and beliefs
Borrow Those Habits!
The next time you can’t seem to make yourself write or blog or do market research (or whatever is on your “to do” list for the writing day), think about areas where you are successful. Borrow those habits–they’re habits you already have under your belt in one area–and simply apply them to your writing.
Does having a support group help you lose weight? Then maybe a support/critique group would help you be accountable for your writing.
Does keeping written records help you balance your budget? Then maybe keeping records of pages or words written and marketing progress would help your writing.
Did setting small daily goals help you get your closets and garage clean? Then would setting small daily goals help you get your book written?
By the same token, notice what you don’tdo to be successful. For example, I have friends who swear by having an exercise partner or going to a gym to work out. (I dislike both of those things.) So while these writers also have critique partners and write in coffee shops with others, I don’t find either of those ideas helpful either. We all have our own styles, based on our personalities. I do much better as my own accountability partner, using kitchen timers and check marks on a calendar for everything from cleaning my house to writing my novels. And total quiet is such a benefit to me, while it makes some writers too antsy to sit still and work.
Build on Past Success
Good habits free up our time and attention so we can focus on more important things than overcoming procrastination. Chances are very good that you have had success in at least one or two other areas of your life. Take time to analyze those habits that work for your particular personality–and try applying them to your writing life. Success may be easier than you think.
You may not have hours every day to write, or you may have tight deadlines. So you need to make the most of your time. And that means getting started quickly.
Write on Cue
A jump-starting activity is something that makes your brain realize immediately that “now it’s time to write!” If Pavlov’s dogs could be trained to salivate at the ringing of a bell, I thought surely I could learn to write on command.
Rituals and Routines
I’ve always loved reading about other writers’ rituals, the things they do to “prime the pump” for writing. I never felt much need–nor wanted to use the writing time–to do much of that myself. The writing exercises would take me 30-60 minutes and Julia Cameron’s morning pages took me an hour. (I consider myself a pretty fast writer, but most of the things that “only take 10-15 minutes” take me considerably longer–including these blog posts.)
What I needed, I realized, was a short cue along the lines of the ringing bell for Pavlov’s dog. I needed something to trigger an automatic writing response–and it needed to be something I could do at home, on the road, or when staying with my grandkids.
Time-Tested Help
If your writing time is short–and you need to get started quickly–here are some rituals and routines that other writers have used:
Light a special lamp or candle
Put on a particular kind of music that works for you (Lyrics? Instrumental?)
Prayer, meditation and/or affirmations for writers
Hot tea or hot chocolate
Eat a banana or apple or something healthy
A short walk–ten minutes or so
Stack dishwasher, pick up house (Some writers do this for their jumpstart, but it doesn’t appeal to me!)
Again, I needed short things to do. The danger is always that the ritual takes over your whole writing time. If you have all day to write, that’s a different ball game. You can take a whole hour to get started, if you want to.
Make a List
It’s a good idea to have a number of rituals to choose from too. “Create as many practices as you can, because sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t,” says Vinita Hampton Wright in The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life. “Their effectiveness will vary. When one thing doesn’t help so much, go to something else…adapting practices according to the season of the year.”
This makes sense to me. While in the winter, a good cup of hot chocolate is perfect, during hot Texas summers, it’s about the last thing you want. I think a written list posted near my writing space would be a good idea too. I might have a whole list of rituals to choose from, but so often when I try to think of one, they all escape me.
If you want to read more about the power of these little habits, see a book by Mason Curry called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. In the book 161 artists, writers, and other creative types give insights into the specific rituals they use to get the creative juices flowing on command.
Our brains never seem to stop. We criticize because we “know” how things and people should be. This “critical editor component” of our personality is absolutely invaluable to the editing and revision process. If you can’t spot what’s wrong with a manuscript, you can’t fix it.
However, this same critical ability can cause writers to actually lose focus, allowing their writing hours to slip away with little or no work done.
Think About It
Many of us go through our daily lives with our internal critic or editor in charge. We don’t see the person right in front of us as he or she is (which may be perfectly fine.) Instead, that person reminds us of a demanding boss or an ex-spouse, and we “see” characteristics that aren’t there. Or they remind us of a forgiven (but not forgotten yet) event. Stress!
Conversely, we think the person in front of us is “supposed” to be kind and supportive (or whatever our inner definition of the perfect parent/spouse/child/sibling). And yet many such relationships are anything but, leaving us hurt and upset because they should be supportive. More stress! Life rarely satisfies a person who lets the “shoulds” run his life.
Do we spend our time “shoulding”? We don’t see a child who is happily singing at the top of her voice. (That child should be quieter in the store!) We don’t see an interesting shade of purple hair. (That teenager should resemble a middle-aged adult instead.) We don’t see the predator or user sometimes either–because trusted family members shouldn’t be such things. Our “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” color everything we observe.
Change Your Perspective
Our inner editor sometimes keeps us from seeing what’s in front of us. We are constantly “revising” the facts. So what’s the problem with that? You can’t accept–and get peace about–what you can’t honestly see or face. You stay stirred up–a condition rarely suited to being creative. Sometimes the simplest solutions evade us because we’re all riled up inside.
It reminds me of a story (you may also be familiar with) about “The River and the Lion:
After the great rains, the lion was faced with crossing the river that had encircled him. Swimming was not in his nature, but it was either cross or die. The lion roared and charged at the river, almost drowning before he retreated. Many more times he attacked the water, and each time he failed to cross. Exhausted, the lion lay down, and in his quietness, he heard the river say, “Never fight what isn’t here.”
Cautiously, the lion looked up and asked, “What isn’t here?”
“Your enemy isn’t here,” answered the river. “Just as you are a lion, I am merely a river.”
Now the lion sat very still and studied the ways of the river. After a while, he walked to where a certain current brushed against the shore and stepping in, floated to the other side.
Control What You Can: Yourself
We also can’t gain peace of mind and the ability to focus unless we’re willing to give up trying to control everyone and everything in our environment. We spend entire days fuming and fretting over situations or people we can’t change or control, wasting precious writing and study time.
We need to save our judging skills for revision time and critiquing. We need to save our control freak behaviors for finagling with our characters’ actions. And you may as well give up having to convince people you’re right, while you’re at it. Letting go of those three things (judging, controlling, being right) will give you more inner peace faster than hours of yoga and meditation and mind-altering substances.
Start Right Here, Right Now
Think about something that is currently keeping your mind in knots to the point that you can barely write. Chances are that you are judging someone’s behavior, or trying to figure out how to control a situation, or having mental conversations in which you prove to that stubborn person how right you are. (I know this from personal experience in case you think I’ve been reading your mail.)
Letting go of criticism and control is freedom. For the writer, it means hours and hours are freed up for reading and writing. Just for today, let grown people and situations be what they are. Let them work on solutions for their own problems–or not. Turn all that “should” energy on your own work. [Often the Boundaries for Writers that we need to enforce are those we set on ourselves!]
At the end of the day, you’ll have something great to show for it!
“Doing our best has limits,”says Richard Swenson, author ofMargins. “Our rush toward excellence in one quadrant of life must not be permitted to cause destruction in another.”Those who go “all out” for success in one area – even writing – risk failure in other important areas of life.
The tug of war happens when we are trying to be excellent in so many roles: writers, parenting children and grandchildren, caring for elderly parents, neighbors, church members, and more. It can be overwhelming!
From Stuck to Unstuck
The sense of being overwhelmed can quickly solidify into being stuck. We want to get off the merry-go-round, but we feel stymied in our attempts to do so. We often can’t see the forest for the trees. Enter a lovely little book called Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck by Vinita Hampton Wright. As she says, when you have too many things on your plate,“Sometimes you have to give yourself permission to just not care so much about how something will turn out.”
It’s all right to set your own priorities. It’s all right not to care about some things–no matter WHO thinks you should (including me). Why? Because if you care deeply about everything, you’ll burn out now and live an exhausted life.
And exhausted writers have a terrible time writing.
All on Your Shoulders?
Often we feel like everything is up to us. Sometimes, though, it really isn’t. Even with those projects or jobs that are totally up to you, they may not really need to be done (like kids’ big birthday parties.) Or they can be done with help (like moving it to a McDonalds Play Place). Only you can decide what things really matter to you.
As Ms. Wright says,“You can decide what is most important, what is next in importance, what you can take or leave, and what has nothing to do with you. Others may think you should care, but it’s not their job to decide what your priorities should be.” (This includes your writing! NO ONE else gets to decide where it belongs on your list of priorities!)
What To Do
What can you do if you’re sinking under responsibilities that choke out your writing time? Ms. Wright advises, “If you are overwhelmed, find one thing to stop caring about and stop caring right now.“
I have some things I need to stop caring about, and some things I can stop caring so much about. For example, this week I wrote up the minutes of a meeting at church, but there was no need to take 90 minutes to do it. Proofreading is one thing, but revising and rewording things several times was a waste of what could have been writing time.
A few years ago, I had to stop caring so much about family dinners for the holidays. Living on the farm in Iowa, everything was homemade from scratch, and much of what we ate was also homegrown. Moving to a city down south, and getting older, meant those cooked-from-scratch meals for the extended family were taking more time than I wanted to give at the holidays. The change was hard, but now I have no problem fixing huge frozen lasagnas from Costco’s!
Whatever!
Most of all, we probably need to stop caring so much what people think about us: about how we look, about our choices in life, about our political opinions, about what we want to write, and where we set our priorities. And we need to care a lot less about other people’s opinions and preferences, and learn to live and let live a bit more.
Certainly, you want to care deeply about certain things. But caring deeply about everything–about things that don’t warrant it–will rob you of precious energy needed for your true desires. And, hopefully, one of those desires is pursuing your writing dream.
I appreciate the notes I’ve received since re-starting the blog this month. I was asked a number of times, “Where have you been the last two years?” Because my Writer’s First Aid blog is all about helping writers hang in there and not quitting and not giving up on writing dreams, it’s certainly a legitimate question. As one person asked, “When writers disappear, where do they go?”
So this post is more about me and my life than most posts I write. Hopefully, you will be encouraged not to quit when life “happens,” as it does to us all. The last two years, it just happened that a LOT of life happened. Some events were quite painful, some intensely annoying, and some brought great joy. In each case, I learned valuable lessons. So . . . here are main events since I disappeared!
My Mom’s Sudden Passing
Mom and Dad’s engagement picture, 1948
Two years ago this month, at the time of my last new blog post, I was battling some symptoms (losing eyesight, exhaustion, hair falling out, not sleeping), plus I’d signed too many book contracts and was struggling to keep up. My mom in Florida (88) had had major heart surgery and other hospitalizations. Then my sister called to say Mom (who had recovered SO well and was even back to ballroom dancing) had died suddenly. So the summer of 2016 passed in a blur as we dealt with estate matters, cleaned out her house where she’d lived for 41 years, and got it sold. As those of you who have been through this process know, it takes a while to recover.
Sign on Gravestone: I Told You I Was Sick
During this time, I continued to get sicker, but doctors kept writing the symptoms off as “aging” issues that I needed to accept. Not very helpful! I burned the midnight oil Googling symptoms. Long story short on the health issues: when you are sure there is something wrong and doctors aren’t/won’t/can’t order the tests you need, find an independent lab nearby and order the tests yourself. I’m so glad I did!
By the time I could convince doctors that there was something seriously wrong with me, I had had the lab work done, got a diagnosis, and started a treatment program of my own found through reading online, watching conference videos, and studying current medical research. By the time doctors diagnosed my main issue, I had been on a treatment program of supplements and major dietary changes and was starting to see improved lab results. Be proactive in your ownhealthcare!It’s an ongoing learning process, but I am thrilled to feel better now than I have in years.
New Books Out
I was writing a lot during this time, and here are the last six adult mysteries I have had published by Annie’s Publishing. [I had someone ask if this was self-publishing. No, it isn’t. This company does many mystery series, and I have written for four of their series. They publish in hardcover, and now ebooks too, I’ve heard. https://www.anniesfiction.com/]
I have thoroughly enjoyed writing for my own age group after only writing fiction for children nearly thirty years. The only mistake I made was signing too many contracts at first, not taking into account the length difference between adult and children’s books. That sounds like a no-brainer, I know, but it didn’t register till later. You can read about them here if you want to know the plots: https://www.kristiholl.com/mysteries-for-adults-and-children/
Watch Your Step!
In April of 2017, I was gardening in the back yard, stepped backward without thinking, and tripped over a full watering can. I went down hard on our rocky dry Texas soil, tried to brace my fall, and broke my left wrist in four places and popped out my left shoulder. I avoided surgery but had to have three casts over eleven weeks, as they put me in traction and lined up each bone so it would attach. (I have tiny bones, without enough to attach steel plates and rods to, so I’m glad they avoided surgery.) They have a saying at the hospital: “crooked arm equals straight bone.” It was hard to believe when I saw the finished casts, but the x-rays did indeed show all the bone pieces in straight lines. [After seeing the shape of the cast, it made sense that physical therapy had to follow.]
I still had contracts to fulfill, and thankfully I had broken the left wrist. I used to enjoy writing by hand, so that’s what I did, filling up spiral notebooks and writing 55,000 words by hand in a couple of weeks. [I actually DID enjoy writing with no distractions that come with a computer. Your paper and pen don’t ding, squeak, ring or crash.]
Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
Once the last cast came off, I had to start typing, but after all summer in casts, my wrist was frozen in a position with the thumb pointing up. I couldn’t rotate my wrist so that the palm faced up or down. I knew that the physical therapy later for my wrist would correct this, but in the meantime, I couldn’t type on a regular keyboard.
However, I found a new keyboard online that looked like something out of a Star Wars movie. It didn’t matter that my wrist was frozen in place because with this keyboard, you type with your thumbs pointed up. It is for people to cure carpal tunnel syndrome or who have had a broken wrist or wrist surgery. My speed was very slow, and I had to do a lot of one-finger correcting, but the book got turned in on time, and I took a break then.
Blessings in the Brokenness
I had had a lot of thinking time when in my casts since I couldn’t drive, and for a long time it was painful to ride anywhere in a car. It gave me time to think, to evaluate my frenetic writing lifestyle, and make some changes.
I remembered a book project that I’d put on the back burner for more than five years, one of those projects that you’re not sure will sell, but you’d love to write anyway. I decided it was now or never. Who knew when I might encounter another deadly watering can? So that’s the project I’m working on now.
Wedding Bells!
The most joyous event in recent years happened just two months ago. My middle daughter, Laurie, was married outdoors at a ranch in Tucson, and she was just the most beautiful bride. All four of my grandkids had parts in the wedding. I try to respect my kids’ privacy, but I’m going to post just one photo of the girls and me. Our whole family welcomed her husband, Jeff, with open arms. Isn’t it wonderful how a joyous event like this can totally eclipse the tougher events?
I’m Going to Summer Camp! Are You?
Camp NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge that happens in July. It’s different from NaNoWriMo in November because you can work on ANY type of creative project of any length, not just a 50,000-word novel. First drafts or revision, scripts or stories or poems or essays… all are welcome! You track your goals based on word count, hours, or pages, and they welcome word-count goals between 30 and 1,000,000 words.
You join an online cabin with up to 20 other writers. It starts tomorrow, and it’s still not too late to create a cabin or join someone else’s cabin. I like small groups myself. My cabin has only two people in it: my long-time writer friend and accountability partner and me. If you’re interested in joining a cabin of your own, check it out: https://campnanowrimo.org
I’m glad to be back in contact with you all. And thank you for notes I’ve received this month after I resurfaced. Writers make the best community!
Back in high school, I watched people transform from shy wallflowers to social butterflies by drinking. They grew talkative and tried things they would never have done sober. Being under the influence didn’t truly help them, although they swore it did.
Being under the influence doesn’t help a writer’s creativity either. [And that includes many other things we’re dependent on for dopamine hits, including sugar, chocolate, and Netflix bingeing.]
Why do we binge on our favorite things when the words are slow to come? Do we somehow think it will speed things up and make the words flow better? That has been the folklore surrounding many famous writers in the past.
Mental Evacuation
Recently I re-read one of the very best books on writing that I own. If You Want to Writeby Brenda Ueland is a classic. In one chapter she talked about how creative words and our really good ideas come slowly–and how impatient writers try to “hurry” the words in unproductive, artificial ways.
“…good thoughts come slowly. And so it is nothing for you to worry about or to be afraid of, and it is even a bad plan to hurry them artificially. For when you do so, there may be suddenly many thoughts, but that does not mean that they are especially good ones or interesting. It is just as when you give a thoughtful, slightly tired person a stiff drink. Before the drink, he says nothing but what seems to him interesting and important. He mentally discards the thoughts that are not important enough to make up for the fatigue of saying them. But after the drink, all his thoughts come out head over heels, whatever crosses his mind. There are suddenly many thoughts; but they are just like the flutter of thoughts that come out of one of those unfortunate people who cannot keep from talking all the time. This kind of talking [or writing, I might add] is not creation. It is just mental evacuation.”
Drug of Choice
Although I never drank, I had my own stimulants to shift my mind into gear. I wasn’t a coffee drinker or smoker, but at one point in my early days of writing when my four children were very young, I had a four-candy-bar-a-day habit, and my day started with two Diet Cokes. When I got bogged down and blocked and didn’t know what to write next, a sugar rush and caffeine jolt could get me producing again. It took me years to see that the quality of the writing suffered during such times.
Ueland quotes Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, War and Peace) on this subject of being quiet and thinking, and waiting for the words and “tiny, tiny alterations of consciousness” to come:
“It is at such times that one needs the greatest clearness to decide correctly the questions that have arisen, and it is just then that one glass of beer, or one cigarette [or candy bar or donut or Coke, I might add] may prevent the solution of the question, may postpone the decision, stifle the voice …”
Creativity Rewarded by Quiet Patience
We get in such a hurry to write, to revise, to submit. When the words don’t come quickly, we use stimulants to force the issue, and often end up with something (Ueland calls) “superficial and automatic, like children yelling at a birthday party,” not something tried and tested and true.
I know I’ve been guilty of this “hurry” habit with my writing in the past, but yesterday I made a conscious effort NOT to do so. I gave it time, and when the words didn’t come readily, I waited (instead of making my usual trip to the fridge or to check out Britbox.) It was uncomfortable at times. But I ended up writing for over two solid hours without interruption, and I’m excited about what I wrote. It may not be War and Peace, but it’s not “superficial and automatic” either.
What do you consider a healthy creative life? Is it hard for you to write without artificial help? Does being under the influence of something affect your writing–or had you thought about it? Try writing “with” and “without,” and see if it makes a difference.
“How does a project get a year behind schedule? One day at a time.” ~~Fred Brooks (IBM computer software developer)
While I’m not behind a whole year on my current writing project, this question has been ricocheting around in my mind lately. I have writing deadlines stacked up for many months, for which I am truly grateful.
But I am sorely behind where I had hoped to be at this point. Some things happened which I could not have foreseen–like happens to everyone. That’s life. There’s probably a lesson there on building more “what if something happens?” time into my schedule.
Right now, I don’t really have the time to do some big analysis of how this happened. I just need to get dug out of this hole and back on schedule. But how?
Faster, More, Hurry!
Our tendency is to look at how behind we have gotten with our writing projections (including you ambitious writers who are doing NaNoWriMo this year) and determine to buckle down and write 10,000 words every day till we are caught up. Then by Day 3 we feel rotten from no sleep or exercise, by Day 6 we are sick, and Day 7 we throw up our hands in despair and take necessary time off.
That has been my usual “catch up” method in the past. And it doesn’t work. It has never worked! And yet that is my inner urge, even as I write this. Stress, stress, stress!
Another Way
But this time I have decided to do it another way. And the minute I made the decision, I noticed my stomach settled down, I stopped hunching over the laptop, and I began breathing deeply again instead of hyperventilating. I will be climbing out of this hole differently.
What will I do? Use my writing GPS system and “recalculate.” Pretend that today is my starting point and I am right on schedule today, then figure out how much I need to do daily to make my deadline. I am relieved to see that it’s not 10,000 words either. It’s not nearly as bad as I was figuring, in fact. That’s often the way it is.
One Day at a Time
The quote at the top of the page shows how we all get behind in our writing projects: one day at a time. But the answer to the problem is also in that quote. We climb out of the hole one day at a time.
And if I concentrate just on the amount I need to do today–and each day after this–then I’ll make the deadline. And I should stay healthy as well. Then I can go out and celebrate when I turn in the book!
With summer vacation upon us, it seemed like a good time to revisit the subject of writing when you are involved with children or grandchildren.
When my children were small–and even as they grew older–I struggled to find a writing schedule that worked most days of the week. After much trial and error, I would hit upon a schedule that allowed me to write nearly two hours per day.
Bliss–but boy, was it temporary!
Not For Long
That “bliss” lasted a very short time usually–until I once again had morning sickness, or someone was teething, or my husband switched to working nights, or someone started school, or someone else went out for three extra-curricular activities and we lived in the car after school and weekends.
It was many years before I realized there is no one right way to schedule your writing. The “right way” (by my own definition) is simply the schedule that allows me to get some writing done on a regular basis.
“How’s your focus?” It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with lately.
Last year my calendar was so full of very good things, but I was frequently exhausted and vaguely dissatisfied. (Well, not vaguely actually. It was a very pointed dissatisfaction with the amount of writing I finished on any given day.)
My children were grown and on their own. I had long ago given up time wasters (TV viewing, hanging on the telephone) and most hobbies (quilting, gardening), and yet…the struggle to write for quality periods of time persisted.
A Busy Blur
A recent sermon gave me a lot to think about. “Beware of living your life without focus,” he said. He talked about how often we substitute being busy for being focused. He finished by challenging us to really give this prayerful thought.
I wrote down his questions and applied them to my writing life:
Do you know where you’re going?
If you stay on the road you’re on, where is it leading?
(And my own corollary question: Are you busy qualifying yourself for a writing life you don’t want?)
Pull Back for Better Focus
You may need to get an overview of how you spend your time before you can answer those questions. It can be an eye-opening exercise to keep track of your activities, hour by hour, for a week or two. For example, you might truly believe that you spend two hours writing every day, plus one hour marketing, and a fourth hour studying. [That’s what I thought I was doing.]
After keeping track, you might find you actually write twenty minutes, but stop frequently to check email. Your marketing hour might actually be spent reading about marketing methods, but not truly doing any marketing of your own projects. Your hour of studying the magazine article on character development might actually boil down to twenty minutes of study and forty minutes of reading ads or following related links.
Training for What?
You may dream of writing novels, but your time tracker might reveal that your writing time is eaten up by writing free newsletters for two organizations you belong to. Or, if you’re well published, you can’t say no when asked to write an endorsement or review of someone’s new book. (That may not sound like much, but reading the book takes several hours, and a well crafted review takes another hour.) Maybe you haven’t had time to work on your own novel for three days because you’ve been critiquing for other writers or writing guest blogs.
All these things make you feel like you’re furthering your writing career as a novelist–but are you? Or are you busy qualifying yourself for something other than your dream? You’re actually gaining experience as a reviewer, a critiquer, a blogger, and a newsletter writer. (Those are fine jobs, if that’s truly what you want to be doing in the long run.) But if you stay on this road–if you continue to spend a large chunk of your writing time this way–do you like where it will inevitably lead you?
Solution?
Beware the fuzzies! Know what your dreams and goals are. We all have our own criteria for choosing goals–and different methods to determine what we’re supposed to do with our writing gifts. (Prayer and journaling work best for me.)
Once you’ve decided, don’t be vague about how you intend to get where you want to go. And stop being an automatic “yes” to each request, no matter how flattering. You must live on a higher plane–above the constant demands for your time–and say “no” to things that don’t further those goals.
NaNoWriMo (the shortened name for National Novel Writing Month) begins November 1st. I wasn’t planning to join this year, but I realized this week that (for several reasons), I had lost momentum on my novel since coming home from England. 
I appreciate the notes I’ve received since re-starting the blog this month. I was asked a number of times, “Where have you been the last two years?” Because my Writer’s First Aid blog is all about helping writers hang in there and not quitting and not giving up on writing dreams, it’s certainly a legitimate question. As one person asked, “When writers disappear, where do they go?”
In April of 2017, I was gardening in the back yard
Once the last cast came off, I had to start typing, but after all summer in casts, my wrist was frozen in a position with the thumb pointing up. I couldn’t rotate my wrist so that the palm faced up or down. I knew that the physical therapy later for my wrist would correct this, but in the meantime, I couldn’t type on a regular keyboard.
I had had a lot of thinking time when in my casts since I couldn’t drive, and for a long time it was painful to ride anywhere in a car. It gave me time to think, to evaluate my frenetic writing lifestyle, and make some changes. 
The most joyous event in recent years happened just two months ago. My middle daughter, Laurie, was married outdoors at a ranch in Tucson, and she was just the most beautiful bride. All four of my grandkids had parts in the wedding. I try to respect my kids’ privacy, but I’m going to post just one photo of the girls and me. Our whole family welcomed her husband, Jeff, with open arms. Isn’t it wonderful how a joyous event like this can totally eclipse the tougher events?
Camp NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge that happens in July. It’s different from NaNoWriMo in November because you can work on ANY type of creative project of any length, not just a 50,000-word novel. First drafts or revision, scripts or stories or poems or essays… all are welcome! You track your goals based on word count, hours, or pages, and they welcome word-count goals between 30 and 1,000,000 words.
