Nathan has been a full-time self-published author since 2012. He sometimes writes about social media, marketing, and the state of publishing from the indie perspective.
💡Make the most of your Community Member profile
Share more about yourself! Click on your gravatar> profile > edit profile
About You tab:
Photo: upload a picture of yourself or your brand
About You: let other community members know a little about you as a person, a creator, and anything else you'd like to add
Banner: add an image of your creator brand, logo, or an image that inspires your creativity
Social Media tab:
Let other members know where they can find you and your brand across social media platforms. This is a great additional step to connect with other creators in the industry!
The CK writing challenge starts tomorrow. It's also Camp Nanowrimo month. The truth is that every day is a new beginning, a new chance to succeed.
Personally, I'm having trouble re-establishing my writing practice. After months of hitting 2k a day every day, life tripped me up and I fell hard. It's been months since I've had a "good writing day." When Haley suggested another writing challenge, I decided that it's time for me to get serious again.
Yeah. It's not exactly that easy.
But here's the thing
I just watched a presentation by James Clear at the Craft + Commerce conference from 2017 (h/t to Nathan Barry). Clear makes a telling case for incremental marginal changes. He outlined four steps and talks a lot about how habits and practice make a difference, but my key take-away for today is this:
Focus on the starting line, not the finish.
Tomorrow it starts. 500 words a day. 5 days. We can do it.
I remember the relief I felt when we put a ribbon on 2020 and left it behind.
Then 2021 said, "Hold my beer."
Yeah.
Next year (AKA "this weekend") we start again. Will it be better? Worse? Meh?
Here's the thing:
Every morning is a new chance to succeed. Every night is the opportunity to reflect on the day and consider what you might do differently tomorrow.
In the next few hours before we type the wrong dates for a few weeks, I plan to spend a little quality time with my journal contemplating how what I'm doing is working and what I might want to do more of to ensure that continues - or even improves. I'll also give some thought to obstacles that I impose on myself, hanging a lantern on the habits I want to drop, and making friends with my fresh new project planner for the year.
I said on another thread here that I want to create hope in the new year. I don't know what that looks like right now, but I'm not going to let that stop me from throwing a few things against the proverbial wall.
We'll see if anything sticks. If it doesn't, there's always a new morning just around the corner.
What are you thinking about right now?
Image credit: Grant Wood , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It's been a long slog. The whole month of November - a month for writing dangerously.
It really doesn't matter if you got your 50k for the month or only 5,000. Even 1,000 is more than you had on November 1.
While NaNoWriMo ends tonight, tomorrow is another day to win at writing. If you take nothing else from NaNo, remember every month is writing month. Every day is another day to win at writing.
Among novelists, a continuum exists where individual authors - sometimes, individual books - use various modes to develop their works.
Some spend a few days - or weeks - building the plot by figuring out what the various points should be that define the story. They outline. They set the pace. They establish the structure of the story. Some will spend time writing character profiles. Some will explicitly build the world, setting the stage for the story to play out on. These are the plotters.
Plantsers are those writers who have a rough idea of what the story is about, where it's going, and how they're going to get there. They might know the characters or the setting, but they generally (if any artistic effort can be generalized) have a figurative sketch of the story ready to fill in before they write.
Then there are the pantsers - those writers who sit down and write the story, discovering it as they go. Undaunted by the blank page, they throw words into the void willy-nilly until the story begins to grow almost like magic. With no touchstones to guide them, the authors navigate by instinct, determination, and cussedness. Eventually they find the ending.
Which is right? All. None. Either. Some stories require more plotting. Some more pantsing. It really comes down to the writer, to the story. The key element in all three is putting the story together the first time.
The real art happens in second draft, when the pile of words assembled gets pruned and shaped. When the details get sharpened, the colors brightened, and the rough edges get smoothed down.
Like sculpture, the interim steps - although necessary - are only a means to the end. Use the tools that work for you, the techniques that help you create the story you want to tell. Don't get bogged down on the should, on the rules.
Each writer's path takes them on a private journey. It's sometimes helpful to see what other paths exist, but ultimately it's a trail each must blaze on their own.
Eventually it happens to all of us. The well runs dry. You're running on fumes because there's nothing left in the tank.
Over the years, I've run out of gas any number of times in a variety of contexts. Sometimes you have to power through. Most of the time something is better than nothing even though you know that the something isn't right, isn't good, isn't enough.
When it comes to writing, do it anyway. Put something on the page because you can fix it later. After you've had a snack, or a nap, or even a shower. Take a walk. Come back to it in an hour.
You may find it wasn't that bad after all.
But you can't discover that if you don't have anything there to begin with.
It's easy to think of all the things you didn't do. The challenge is capitalizing on those things and doing them today.
I talk a lot about the power of today. It's something that I knew when I was a kid, but lost track of for some decades. In the quest to Do All The Things, I buried myself in all the things I couldn't do. We all do it. I still do it but I fight it.
The answer is - of course - to focus on what you can do today. For NaNoWriMo we all agree that the thing we're going to do is write 1667 words a day - 50,000 words by month end. It's not going to be the only thing we do, but those things will likely get done without us worrying about them.
We're almost done with NaNoWriMo. I actually hit my 50k a couple of days ago. The story isn't complete but I'm almost done with it. Or am I?
The thing to remember is that the writing is never done. Even after November, after this story, there's another one waiting to be told. That's what it means to be a writer.
As we approach the darkest part of the year, we're also approaching "the holidays." Holidays can be a double-edged sword for writers.
On the one hand, a holiday is often a break from the day job. On the other, family expectations ramp up.
It's a time to spend with family and friends, but your imaginary friends aren't invited. With NaNoWriMo, having a family-heavy holiday near the end of the month in the US, when deadlines loom and stress builds, it can make for a tense day or two.
Being tense doesn't help. Watching the clock instead of spending time with loved ones doesn't make the words come faster.
It's a big ask, but it's a good exercise in being in the moment. Pay attention to what's in front of you. Your writer brain will catalog it, save it for a scene later. Take a moment to savor the scents, to feel the emotions. You don't need to be pressing keys to be engaged in writing.
Sometimes the best writing sessions don't involve keyboards or words.
