 
 
I’m not a full-time writer. I write in the interstices of my life – early in the morning, during my lunch break, and in the space between the end of my work-day and the time my youngest comes home from school.
Now, with the quarantine imposed by the COPVID-19, I have more time on my hands, but with the presence of housebound children as well, it’s become trickier for me to write.
I needed something to keep me on track so I wouldn’t faff my day away, tweeting aimlessly or trying to convince my little one that 8 hours of Rome:Total War is an inadequate substitute for actually reading a book about Roman history.
So I went to my fall-back position. I logged onto nanowrimo.org and created a project. Then I started writing like it was November.
Just to be clear – though NaNoWriMo occurs in November and CampNaNoWriMo takes place in April and July, the website is available all year round.
The great thing about the NaNoWriMo platform is that it tracks your word count, creates projections and helps you stay on track towards your word count. For example, I’ve set a goal for writing a 70K draft of the second novel of my Navarro family series, Incandescent (the first installment, Incomparable, has a publication date of Fall 2021 with Harlequin’s Special Edition Line). You can see my project below:
As you can see, each time you hit a milestone, you get a badge. For an affirmation-whore like me, I like unlocking the different rewards. Psychologically, it works to incentivize further positive behaviors.
In addition, if you like hard data, the platform gives you a ton of it.
According to my goal (70K by April 30th), I’m on track as long as I write the required word count per day (which is somewhere around 1300 words ). I can see how many words I’m missing and how many continuous days I’ve updated my word count.
Other valuable metrics are offered as well, such as average writing time (I actually update between 8-9 am because that’s usually when my writing sessions end; I actually start writing at 6am) and average words per day.
An important metric that I keep my eye on is the “At this rate, you’ll be done by” tile, which is supposed to be, at the minimum, the original date I set when creating my project. My goal is to shorten that time but if it rolls over into May, that metric encourages me to get some more words in on that day so that the estimated date goes back to the one I’ve set.
Plus, you can’t beat the banners for each challenge, like the adorable one at the top of this post.
For a results-oriented person like me, seeing the word count build up and the incremental arrival of end my goal is a source of powerful motivation for me. In other words, this platform works for my personality.
If you are the kind of writer who gets stressed out by external motivators, then this might not be the accountability method for you. Like anything else, you have to find what works for you. But if you are a person who needs structure and measurable benchmarks to get things done, this might represent a possibility for you.
There are also so many writer resources, you’ll never exhaust all the pep talks and craft posts.
So if you are the kind of person who needs a little encouragement to get your writing done, I’d suggest giving it a try. And don’t forget to make a donation to help maintain an invaluable resource in the writing community.