NaNo...vember
Friday, November 2nd, 2012 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanaleh
Huh. Interesting.
Yesterday morning, about 7 hours into the official span of NaNoWriMo, ergo obviously without yet having written a single word, I started noticing a flourishing backchannel of internal resistance.
Do I have time to do this?
I really don't have time to do this.
Look at all the other stuff I've committed to doing right now.
Think of how much other stuff I could get done this month if I committed to the same amount of staying-in-and-working time to existing projects -- even writing -- instead of tackling a new fiction project.
Maybe I should do DigiWriMo [which a friend had posted about on Facebook] instead -- then I could just tackle all my enormous backlog of blog-post ideas, and wouldn't that feel good? Maybe I am more cut out to write nonfiction/essays than novels.
Maybe I should just USE the IDEA of NaNoWriMo as an anti-procrastination tool, on the "anyone can do any amount of work as long as it is not the work they are supposed to be doing" principle.
Hmm, I'm really not over my cold [that started Monday]. Maybe I don't have the energy for this.
... Hmm, I think I will hit refresh on Facebook 50 or 60 times.
In all fairness, last night when I got home, I did sit down and -- instead of writing -- do 3+ hours of indexing work on the longstanding book production freelance project which the author suddenly now wants to send to press by the end of the month. (See previous statement about procrastination.)
The other clever piece of internal resistance is the inability to decide which of the four concepts-I-have-been-kicking-around-for-ages I should commit to developing. I understand that the actual correct answer is IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER, THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU PICK ONE AND GET STARTED, but there is some huge psychological hurdle around picking the one to do FIRST.
One could argue -- if one were (say) my mother, or any other internalized source of negative self-talk -- that this quandary is rooted in the same commitmentphobia which has led directly to my current position of being divorced and childless at age 40. But let us write off that voice as yet another unhelpful diversionary tactic.
So, really, I don't know. I think the next step is going to be pulling out the notes I have made over the years for the aforementioned various concepts and see which already is the farthest along, and see if that helps jump-start my motivation.
My other pet approach is normally to post an LJ poll ("Which of the following should I write this month?") -- but somehow even the idea of spelling out my four different premises for public consumption feels risky, and not like it would be much help in the end. :-}
... tl;dr Fear is the mind-killer. *sigh*
Yesterday morning, about 7 hours into the official span of NaNoWriMo, ergo obviously without yet having written a single word, I started noticing a flourishing backchannel of internal resistance.
Do I have time to do this?
I really don't have time to do this.
Look at all the other stuff I've committed to doing right now.
Think of how much other stuff I could get done this month if I committed to the same amount of staying-in-and-working time to existing projects -- even writing -- instead of tackling a new fiction project.
Maybe I should do DigiWriMo [which a friend had posted about on Facebook] instead -- then I could just tackle all my enormous backlog of blog-post ideas, and wouldn't that feel good? Maybe I am more cut out to write nonfiction/essays than novels.
Maybe I should just USE the IDEA of NaNoWriMo as an anti-procrastination tool, on the "anyone can do any amount of work as long as it is not the work they are supposed to be doing" principle.
Hmm, I'm really not over my cold [that started Monday]. Maybe I don't have the energy for this.
... Hmm, I think I will hit refresh on Facebook 50 or 60 times.
In all fairness, last night when I got home, I did sit down and -- instead of writing -- do 3+ hours of indexing work on the longstanding book production freelance project which the author suddenly now wants to send to press by the end of the month. (See previous statement about procrastination.)
The other clever piece of internal resistance is the inability to decide which of the four concepts-I-have-been-kicking-around-for-ages I should commit to developing. I understand that the actual correct answer is IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER, THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU PICK ONE AND GET STARTED, but there is some huge psychological hurdle around picking the one to do FIRST.
One could argue -- if one were (say) my mother, or any other internalized source of negative self-talk -- that this quandary is rooted in the same commitmentphobia which has led directly to my current position of being divorced and childless at age 40. But let us write off that voice as yet another unhelpful diversionary tactic.
So, really, I don't know. I think the next step is going to be pulling out the notes I have made over the years for the aforementioned various concepts and see which already is the farthest along, and see if that helps jump-start my motivation.
My other pet approach is normally to post an LJ poll ("Which of the following should I write this month?") -- but somehow even the idea of spelling out my four different premises for public consumption feels risky, and not like it would be much help in the end. :-}
... tl;dr Fear is the mind-killer. *sigh*