“It is only process that saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” – Elizabeth King
I’m a person who needs a deadline. In everything. In my technical writing career it was often commented that possibly I skated a little too close to that line. But without it, I end up being a victim of too much time and not enough pressure.
I have always meant to write that book, but there’s always time, you know?
Except that’s only true if you do the work. And I have not been doing the work.
And here we are, the day before November. You might not have heard of it but NaNoWriMo has been going for many years. (National Novel Writing Month) and the premise is that instead of taking years, you take 30 days to write your 50,000 word novel. Now, I’m not writing a novel, but I am using the structure to create just the kind of pressure I need.
My project is – Run Your Heart Out – part running memoir, part training theory and application. Everything I wish every runner could know to create joy and confound their own expectations. And I’ll be releasing daily words on my patreon support page if you’d like to take a peek at what I’m working on.
But, as my book is probably not going to be as long as a traditional novel (or need to be!) I’ll also be doing one blog post per day and adding that to my overall word count. Side note: if you subscribe to get blog posts via email and don’t want to get an email every day, now might be a great time to update your preferences!
I got a great reminder today that there’s no such thing as writers block, there’s just a fear of bad writing. But there is no way around it, the only way is through.
There are always points where you think you should give yourself an ‘out’. Yesterday I got confirmation on another grant writing project which is due in at the beginning of December. That would be easy for me to say, I can’t do this right now. But the truth is, there’s always something. And this time, I’ve decided to keep myself on the hook.
I’m going to need all the support I can get. If you have any specific questions or topics you feel isn’t well covered, I would love to hear them.
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Things you don’t think about until you have to.
