It’s my birthday month!

I’m making decent progress with my arm muscles and I expect I’ll have some more muscle visibility by the end of next week (yay, me!).

But that’s not why I am so happy to see November.

I’m thrilled because this is the month I am teaching myself to consistently work toward my goals instead of setting them and either hoping for the best or piling all the work in at the end.

How am I going to do that? I’m so glad you asked!

The answer is NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month if you want to be formal). Last year, I wrote my first novel in the month of November. It was exciting and exhilarating, and helped me break a mental barrier about writing a longer piece.  The thing is, though, I wrote the majority of that novel, over 30,000 words, in one weekend.  Sure, that’s a feat in itself, and it’s good to have that skill to pull out when you need it but it’s not a great way to work.

That’s why I am challenging myself to not only write 50, 000 words this month, but to write every day. I want to become one of those people who can pace their work to match their lives, and I want to stop using panic to fuel my work.*

As part of this challenge to myself, I am going to blog every day about writing or about whatever comes up. I’ll warn you now, some of these posts are going to suck,  because, like NaNoWriMo taught me, sometimes you have to let go of the focus on quality so you can just get the work done.  I’m totally letting myself off the hook on the quality front while I get my habits in place.

Allons-y, Alonso, November awaits!

*Consistency: it’s where it’s at.  Or I think it is, I wouldn’t know,