Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-incentives"
Completing Word Counts
The end of November got closer. I was thousands of words away from my NaNo goal. Should I give up?
Giving up is appealing. The novel doesn't have to get written. The world will continue to exist if it does not get written.
Will I continue as a writer if I give up? I don't know. I do know I am good at starting projects of all kinds and terrible at seeing them through to completion. Would quitting become a habit?
I chose to not find out. I wasn't going to quit.
The problem was keeping myself motivated to sit and type 5,000 to 7,000 words a day.
Telling myself to sit still and type was not going to work. I needed incentives.
Each thousand words completed rated a break doing something fun for a short time.
Next was making sure I had scenes planned out in my head I had to get typed before they evaporated into thin air.
My goats loved this one. As my buck Augustus ensured I would be doing mostly feeding and not milking this winter, I spend time standing around watching and listening to oats disappear. This is found time for novel plotting. As I got glassy-eyed plotting, goats snuck in for a second bowl of oats.
Between the two I did reach the word goal. Now I need to finish the novel. It will wrap up in another few thousand words.
Then I get to start over again doing the rewrite.
Giving up is appealing. The novel doesn't have to get written. The world will continue to exist if it does not get written.
Will I continue as a writer if I give up? I don't know. I do know I am good at starting projects of all kinds and terrible at seeing them through to completion. Would quitting become a habit?
I chose to not find out. I wasn't going to quit.
The problem was keeping myself motivated to sit and type 5,000 to 7,000 words a day.
Telling myself to sit still and type was not going to work. I needed incentives.
Each thousand words completed rated a break doing something fun for a short time.
Next was making sure I had scenes planned out in my head I had to get typed before they evaporated into thin air.
My goats loved this one. As my buck Augustus ensured I would be doing mostly feeding and not milking this winter, I spend time standing around watching and listening to oats disappear. This is found time for novel plotting. As I got glassy-eyed plotting, goats snuck in for a second bowl of oats.
Between the two I did reach the word goal. Now I need to finish the novel. It will wrap up in another few thousand words.
Then I get to start over again doing the rewrite.
