Taking Notes: JeanneVincent.com » NaNoWriMo http://www.jeannevincent.com Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:50:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Focus on your writing goal http://www.jeannevincent.com/focus-on-your-writing-goal/ http://www.jeannevincent.com/focus-on-your-writing-goal/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 23:05:45 +0000 Jeanne http://jeannevincent.com/blog/2006/11/02/focus-on-your-writing-goal/ I got off to a rocky start with NaNo yesterday. I had a major brain freeze. You, know, the kind that blocks any iota of creativity concerning your WIP.  Frankly, it scared me and that huge mountain of self doubt about my ability to write a novel came crashing down on me.  I couldn’t even come up with any ideas to blog about, and that began the process of eroding more of my self confidence.  Can you tell I was heading downhill toward that canyon of despair with no brakes?

Fortunately, I’ve been struggling with writing a novel for a very long time. I say “fortunately” because I recognized this path and I know what to do.  I gave myself a basic pep talk, starting with reiterating the exact nature of my goal with NaNoWriMo.  My goal for November is simply to write every single day in order to develop and reinforce the habit of daily writing.  That’s it. No great American novel. No stress about counting words or pages.  Just relax and write every day. If my NaNoWriMo participation results in a rough draft, that’s a plus.

Keeping my goal small and manageable is what I need to do to succeed today. So no more kicking myself around. I met my stated goal yesterday, and I have met it today. The other thing that helped me get over my slump today was this article on writer’s block by author Holly Lisle.

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