My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.
November is National Novel Writing Month, and whether or not you’ve tried to accomplish writing a novel in four weeks, I think there are some useful principles that can be applied throughout the year. (April is Camp NaNoWriMo if you are interested.)
Principles for Any Month
- Set a concrete goal. (NaNoWriMo suggests writing 50,000 words in 30 days.)
- Publicly declare that goal. (Whether this works because of accountability or shame, I’m not sure. But it does change the dynamic from just promising yourself.)
- Find other people trying for the same goal, if you feel like that will help. (You are all suffering together!)
- Monitor your progress on a regular basis. (NaNoWriMo includes daily word count tallies.)
- Consider changing the way you create. For example, I normally edit as I write, but NaNoWriMo encourages participants to keep going, without revising, until they reach the word count goal. I found this change very freeing. Because I kept writing, instead of going back and fixing plot problems, my story evolved in a different, wonderful direction.
- Check the results at the end of the project. If you encountered obstacles, think about how can you avoid them in the future.
Have you ever tried NaNoWriMo or creating in a crunch-time atmosphere?
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