NaNoWriMo and Me
Posted November 5, 2015 by Tara Pealer
For most of the school year, I struggle with my time management skills. It’s not that I don’t have the skills, but rather that I struggle to effectively use them. I have planners and notebooks and generally know of the syllabus and the schedule I should be on to get everything done.
I have a tendency to ignore all of them in favor of doing other things, which, often, are not actually productive.
This, however, completely changes in the month of November.
November is NaNoWriMo. I’m very passionate about NaNoWriMo. I’ve won the official NaNo every year since 2013.
For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It occurs in the month of November when a bunch of completely crazy people, myself included, decide to write fifty thousand words in 30 days. This averages out to 1,667 words per day.
It’s a lot of writing, and, to get it all done requires a lot of planning. I haven’t stayed up past midnight yet to get homework done or get a head start on my word count for the day, but it’ll happen. In the meantime, I’ve found that I can get about four hundred words written on my phone during the half hour ride to Hynes station, and about five hundred on the ride from the MFA stop back to my apartment every day. Fifteen minute class breaks can (and have) resulted in me writing a handwritten page of notes to be typed up later in the day.
November and NaNoWriMo bring out the planner in me. I’ve completed over half of a homework assignment not due for another two weeks, laid out the groundwork for another three assignments, and, on top of it all, found time to visit the MFA and tour some of historic Boston with friends. Essentially, NaNoWrimo turns me into that grad student doing the things you wish you were doing.
I encourage everyone to participate in NaNoWrimo, because while there’s pressure to write 50,000 words in one month, they don’t have to be good words. NaNoWriMo is the fastest way I’ve found to get past writing anxiety, because you have to write something every single day.
And, hey, if you’re on NaNo already, add me as a writing buddy!