I’ve come out the other side of my second round of mid-term assignments, and the end of my third NaNoWriMo is five days away. Of the two, the first has significantly more profound long-term implications, but I’ve been struggling throughout my holiday week not to fall prey to the droopies because I don’t see much hope for finishing my third NaNo novel.
In fact, I’m not sure I’ll sign up for NaNo again while I’m still a student in this MBA program. The competition for hours of dedicated work for each goal is fierce, and the small, inevitable derailments that happen in the course of any given month end up hurting more than they would without the rival ambition. I’m hearing from other students that future classes will have an even more onerous burden of weekly papers than what I’ve faced so far, too.
All that said, I don’t feel comfortable just shelving my writing goals. I discovered that it’s realistic to take an actual lunch (i.e. away from my desk) at work every other day or so, to get in half an hour’s worth of words. This has been pretty piddling compared to the output I’m used to, but if I can produce 500 words on those days and 1,500 over the weekend, I will eventually finish writing the Red Slaves series.
My one big win of the week on the writing front: Yesterday I broke the 3K word mark in one day that had been my aspiration for the whole month. And that means I more than doubled what I had had at the beginning of the month and am about 20K away from the end of this novel. I will at least push myself this week to see how close I can get to completing that goal.
In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the ROW80 participants to see how they’re dealing with their goals.
You gotta do what you gotta do, and keep your priorities straight. Just don’t give up on the writing front, and you’ll be aces eventually! =)