Camp NaNoWriMo Day 16: So Tired
While I failed to accomplish my goal on the 10th, I was later inspired by Kate Cavanaugh. In one of her recent videos, she says that she’s deciding to work on each of her projects for one hour each day, using the Forest app to help her focus. I’ve used the Forest app before-- both years ago and more recently-- but it never worked that well. So, I’m using both the Forest app and Habitica together.
I decided on four daily goals to accomplish between Monday and Friday: Writing, Studying, Editing, and Art Making. (I even have four different ‘trees’ for each goal!) I will try to keep writing on the weekend, but I’ll try to not be as hard on myself if I forget.
As for my habits in Habitica, I have two personal positive goals and two negative goals. The negatives are to not watch any Youtube videos or play any incremental games before or during those four hours. I get heavily distracted by both and starting them at any point during that time leads me to feeling bad after. The goal of this is to work through them for at least one hour each with little to no distractions during those four hours. I tend to work past the hour minimums, even if it takes me some time to get going at first.
Of course, the first day of doing this, Monday the 13th, was the easiest and best day. I had a lot I wanted to do (namely with editing) and was able to get things done. I felt great after.
On Tuesday cracks begin to show. I had stayed up much too late the night before, so I was extra tired while trying to do the mental work required for writing. Studying went well. As for editing, I finished working on what I had written that day within 30 minutes if not 15. This meant that I could continue working on the novel outline. This is very tiring work that I am not liking at the moment. But, it is good work. I don’t actually remember how art making went.
Yesterday (Wednesday) went a little different. While I was extra tired, I managed to not just get past my 600 word daily goal but also get more than 1,200 words in. Studying went well. Editing went a little differently. What I’d been writing so far didn’t match up with my outline. So, I had to make some adjustments before continuing with the outline.
Now before Wednesday, my negative habits had read “No [habit] before working”. I had set a reward of watching one hour of Youtube for 25 coins. As I had amassed enough coins, I decided to reward myself. While I was able to watch some writing videos, this wasn’t all bad. But, I was lounging on the couch, which meant that I was extra tired after. When I later went to work on art, I was so tired that I decided to just doodle for the hour. That was a great idea. The trouble came when I ended up playing some incremental games during that time. Playing them for too long will give me awful headaches. I can’t help but get sucked into them regardless. So, I added the “or during” line to my negative habits. I also removed the one hour of Youtube goal.
As for today, this blog post got written during Editing time. I did make sure to do a little outline work first, but this does give me time to get blogging in.
With all that being said, I have realized that making this habit-tracking combo work will mean two things. One: I need to head to bed at a certain time during week nights. I know when this is. I just need to do it. Two: I understand that going from no structured working to four hours of structured working is a big change. It means at least three hours of solid mental work. I am going to be tired from all of this no matter how well I sleep the night before. The only way to work through this is to just keep at the four tasks every day. Once I adjust to it, things will get much easier.
Overall, a tiring week can mean a good week. Regardless of how tired I feel, I’m still getting a lot done. Writing will continue to be a slog, but it will be a structured slog. I really need this right now, so I am very grateful for Kate’s inspiring video.
I hope you all are doing well and staying as safe as you can!
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Note: because I’d gotten so far behind on editing, trying to add the past daily numbers to my NaNo tracker became too frustrating. So, I’ll share my tracked words for the first half of this month below, along with a link to that Kate Cavanaugh video.
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The Kate vid: Here
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As per my writing goal, I should have 9,600 words in today. I'm currently at 7,685 words and that's okay.
That top green line shows my average scenes and words for the month. I say that the words have been edited as opposed to written and unedited.
The Tracker:
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