March Madness

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about participating in Camp NaNoWrimo this April, hoping to get a first draft of my third novel done. But, a couple of things have happened recently that have me thinking about doing something a bit different. First, I’ve completed NaNoWrimo twice, getting a first draft out of the deal each time. But there’s a part of me that is a bit worried that without NaNoWrimo, I will struggle to hit my writing goals for a given project. NaNoWrimo is almost like a safety net for me--I know if I sign up, I will complete the 50K challenge. I’m just wired that way. But without that challenge hanging over me head, I’m not sure I can keep myself accountable to hitting consistent word count goals.

I’ve also been gaining a lot of inspiration from Joanna Penn’s wonderful blog and podcast, The Creative Penn over the past several months. In a recent video podcast, Joanna talked about creating a production schedule for yourself. Essentially, you decide how many words you want to write over a given time and then break it down into how many words a day you’ll need to write. Now, I have thought about how many books I want to write over the next few years, but I want to start small in terms of my production schedule, until I find a system that works for me, my family, my full-time job, etc.

So, I’ve decided to do a test schedule for the month of March. My goal is to write at least 500 words of fiction each day for the entire month. I have a few short story ideas I have been kicking around for a while, and If I hit my goal of 15000+ words for the month, I should be able to at least have solid first drafts of all three stories.

Now ultimately, I’d love to write over 1000 words a day, but I’m not sure that’s realistic for me right now. My main goal is to be productive and moving forward with my fiction every day.

So the plan is set. March Madness begins in a couple days.

You can watch the recent video cast that Joanna Penn did in the player below. Then go check out her blog at www.thecreativepenn.com.