PerNoWriMo

I'm an idiot. I am completely devoid of self-discipline, and I consistently fail to meet my goals.

Quite possibly, it will happen again this time, but maybe if I aim so high as I am now, in the end I will still have something considerable even if I fail.

This December I am going to aim for 30,000 words. That's 1,000 words a day, and thus, absolutely ridiculous. Hell, that's my entire word count right now! But whatever, that's my aim regardless.

I'm starting this PerNoWriMo (or Personal Novel Writing Month) today, the 30th of November, to prepare myself for what's to come. I still have three days left of school before my two month holiday.

Although "systems" don't seem to be my forte, I'm going to try one out here:
- The first thing I will do each morning is write.
- I will reuse the system of "reading-writing / writing-reading" as in my last challenge.
- When I write, my aim for each day will be 1,000 words, but I will not write aiming for word count. Instead, I will aim to complete a number of scenes.
- I may stop once I reach 1,000 words, but no less.

Unfortunately, I won't have the comfort of knowing that people all around the world are also working hard at their novels. However, my friend has agreed to take the plunge as well, so I will have some support.

But now it's time for me to write!

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2 comments:

Shannon said...

Hey, the difficult part of forging a habit is in the build up phase. Of course, if 1,000 words is a bit too hard, why not aim for 200 words? Much easier to do the Come Hell or High Water clause with that. That's like two paragraphs. If you do more, good for you. But stick with the 200 words for the first fortnight. Then up it by 100 words.

By the time you're up to 2000 words, you're already so used to finding time and doing your daily writing that even if don't meet that limit every day, you'd be writing.

Ryan Sullivan said...

What lovely advice, Shannon!

I've noticed from my experiences that the problem with high goals is that they make you afraid to start due to the fear of failure.

And the only thing worse than writing a small amount is writing nothing. That's why I've toned my challenge down to, for now at least, writing something every day. I lost motivation when I lost about 400 words of my work and had to retype it all from what I remembered. I'll post back on the progress of my PerNo when I reach a more successful stage.

I'm hoping, in any case, that I can write something decently substantial (20,000+ words) by the end of my two month school break.

Thanks again for your support. :)

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Welcome to The Dark Corner of the Mind. My name is Ryan Sullivan and my aim with this blog is to help others with their own writing, as well as to make note of some of my own writing endeavours.

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