Saturday, October 4, 2008

Banes of Wordcounts!

Or maybe something that can save you in the middle of November. Things that can be either way. A prime example is the forums at the NaNoWriMo website. Those things can save your novel or completely destroy you if you hang out there too much. That's the hard thing. A few other things that for me personally can mean life or death:

  • Origami. This stuff is so relaxing for when I'm stressed out, but if I do it too much I might completely lose my wordcount.
  • Music. It may be a great stimulator, but if I know the words I'll end up stopping my writing to sing along, thus wasting precious minutes.
  • Chatting with friends. If they're writings and doing NaNoWriMo with me, they can encourage and be a whip to keep me going. Or we can all be distracted at once with chatting.
  • My schedule. It's busy enough, and I wouldn't mind dropping some stuff for November, but the thing is, without it I wouldn't be motivated to get up early and get my writing done. And if I don't get up early I don't think I would get my writing done, if that makes sense.

So what do you have that can make or break your writing? It's strange how there are two sides to almost any activity. There's always a fine line between how much you need, and what's way too much.

1 comment:

Anna Scott Graham said...

family tends to be my biggest bane, in that I'd love to hang out with them, but if I'm in the middle of writing...

sigh... especially when eldest child rings, and I know she's missing home, and I'm in the middle of a scene...

hard! or eating. sometimes I forget to eat.

I usually make up for that though... :)))