My 12 Habits

Last month, I started an ongoing thing that I call my 12 Habits: it's a way for me to focus on one habit at a time, rather than a bunch of them. It's also a way for me to focus on a habit for an entire month, rather than doing one for a week or two, and then moving on to my next interest.

So, if you look in the sidebar, you'll see the 12 habits I plan to tackle over the next year or so. They'll change, as I go along ... what I've put up there is a rough list, and I'm still thinking on it.

My first habit, in November, was writing daily. I cannot claim success with that habit, and I will be continuing to work on it in the coming months. I wrote daily for the first week, but was spotty in weeks 2 and 3, and then wrote phenomenally in the last week. I hope to be more consistent with this from now on, and more consistent with my other habits.

I will be doing a series on the 12 Habits ... one post for each of the habits over the next week or so, talking about what I want to achieve, how I will measure each goal, what strategies I'll use, maybe some links. Another note: the 12 Habits won't be limited to 12 ... after I do the 12th one, I'll move on to the next. I just call it that because I'll be working on 12 habits a year, one per month.

Fifty. Thousand. WORDS!!!!!! I did it!!!!!

I can't believe I did it. As I posted yesterday, I entered NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, and fell way behind. I was 19,000 words behind with three days left, 13,000 words behind with two days left, and at 3:30 a.m. this morning I woke up with 6,000 words to write before midnight. Well, I knew I could do it, so of course I procrastinated.

But about an hour ago, I was within sight of the finish line, and I sprinted triumphantly to the end! I made it! I went to the NaNo site, uploaded my novel, and was congratulated on winning! I got a cool winners certificate to download and print out, and a nice winner's icon to display on this site, which I will proudly leave in the left sidebar for as long as people will stand it.

Really, my novel isn't done. I reached the 50K word goal, which is exhilarating, but I probably have another 20K to go to the end. And then, I take this crappy first draft, which is what it really is, and I have to revise. And revise. Until I like it. And then I'll decide what to do with it -- I hope it'll be good enough to send to a publisher, but I can't tell yet. Ask me in a few months.

I hope to continue the habit of writing every morning, at least 500-1000 words a day, for the rest of my life. I will wake up tomorrow morning and write. I won't write on Sunday, because that's my first marathon!

Which brings me to the other point of this post: in the span of a few days, I will accomplish two of my life's major goals: to run a marathon, and to write a novel. I will probably have done both very crappily, but that's not the point, is it? I am awed by my accomplishments this week.

Now to carry it on to 2007.

Only a day left for NaNo!

This is my first year doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which is a mad dash to writing a novel of at least 50,000 words. I started the month out great, doing about 2,000 words a day in the first week. Then, typically, I dragged in the second week, and barely wrote anything the third week, and then made sporadic attempts to catch up. Yesterday I wrote more than 5,000 words, which isn't bad, but today I need to write somewhere around 6,000 words, and tomorrow 7,000 words.

I only have a few hours left tonight before I get too sleepy to write, but I'm going to go on super mode and try to actually reach 7,000 words for the day. That'll leave 6,000 for me to write tomorrow. Yikes.

I'll check back tomorrow, after the madness is over, to report on whether I made it or not. And to reflect on the madness, and what I learned, and where I go from here.