Once again, it has been a while since I’ve posted. Last month I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I meant to post about it and totally forgot.
Why did I neglect posting? Well, I was busy forming a good writing habit. I disciplined myself and forced myself to write before I loaded up any games. This worked amazingly well.
I know myself. I knew that if I started with games, then I would never get around to writing anything.
So, did I hit the 50,000 word count goal of NaNoWriMo? Hell no.
Is that ok? Hell yes.
I set my own personal goal to be 20,000 words. I did that to make it less stressful, and more attainable. 50k means you have to write 1,666 words per day. That’s quite a bit. While it’s totally possible to write that many words in a day, keeping that up for 30 days in a row is super tough.
I aimed for 20k because I wanted to beat my previous year’s records. The first year I participated, I managed to reach 17k-ish. The second year was only about 14k. I just wanted to hit that 20k and hit that milestone.
I succeeded. I ended up with 23, 297 words written last month. FUCK YEAH!
Now, that was totaled over four projects. The main project still had 17k in it. Other smaller projects and random stories made up the rest. It worked well. It is very difficult for me to focus on one project every single day. Having these other writing projects gave me a break, and still allowed me to be productive.
So, what did I learn this time? Writing habits. I made myself write every single day in November. Some days might have only been 100-200 words, but I realized that over time, I would actually feel better once I wrote. I would wake up and be excited to write.
Holy fuck. I found motivation! *gasp*
Speaking of motivation, I made myself a poster and put it up on the wall above my monitor. If I have bad writing days, this still helps me.
These are all books that I have indeed read. These are authors that have high sales, and multiple books out there. A while back, you might remember me talking about A Kiss of Shadows. I read these books as research. For one, I like to see what’s popular in the vampire/supernatural genre as one of the biggest projects I have centers around vampires. For two, I wanted to see how popular authors treated sex scenes. (You can’t have vampire stories without sex. I mean, seriously…)
Now, in reading things like this, it really helped me figure out how I don’t want to write. There are many issues that I had with all of those books, hence the poster.
Seeing the level of things out there and selling, it brought to mind “Why am I not writing? I can do better than this.”
This is how I need to think. Actually having confidence in my writing is a rare thing. Hell, having confidence in anything I do is rare. This last month did wonders for my self esteem.
It also did wonders to set me on a good path. I want to publish stories. I want people to read them. I want to (hopefully) make some money and support myself with my writing. I know that’s going to be hard, but if I can at least a bill or two with writing sales, then I’ll be happy.
My interest in writing has been rekindled. I am being creative every single day, and my mood has vastly improved because of it.
Hell, the other day, I actually drew something.
I don’t draw often. I usually get frustrated and quit because things don’t turn out how I want them. With this piece, I just drew. It became a tree. I didn’t start out with a design. I actually like how this turned out, and that is a fucking rarity when it comes to drawing. But hey, I’m probably going to do more drawings like this. It was *gasp* fun to do.
So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I’m pushing myself on the writing front. NaNoWriMo may be over, but I’m not done. I have spreadsheets set up to chart my daily word counts, and have decided to mini shift my writing.
What does that mean? It means that I will be devoting at least 4-5 hours of my day to just write. If I want this hobby to become a career, then I need to buckle down and get shit done.
I’m not sure what happened to me. I feel weird. I feel motivated. I feel like I changed something deep within my core. I’m hoping it stays this way.