You don’t have to write every day
Lessons learned from NaNoWriMo: Part II
This is a guest post from Caitlin Fitzsimmons, a journalist, travel writer, blogger and wannabe fiction writer. Her site is caitlinfitzsimmons.com.
Another oft-repeated piece of writing advice is that writers should write every day. In NaNoWriMo terms that means writing 1,667 words every day, no exceptions. Except I didn’t do that. Some days it was impossible to write at all, other days I wrote 3,000 words without any problem. It does help not to fall too behind - one day I had to write 5,000 words and that was no fun at all.
Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I’ll be lowering my goals on word count - for the sake of my sanity, health and the quality of my writing. But I don’t think I’m going to commit to a daily output. I found that it’s really about writing regularly rather than every day, and it might be helpful to think about weekly rather than daily output. It’s like exercise - if you write three or four times a week, you will still stay “writing fit” and words will be written.
Some writers do write every day and swear by it, but it’s about finding what works for you. If I can’t even manage every day during NaNoWriMo, then I doubt that’s ever going to be my style so rather than feel guilty I should probably accept that and find what does work.
Hi Caitlin…
While I do think writing every day is useful in that it gets me into a routine, I also find that when I force myself to do so (like I did at the start of NaBloPoMo), that my writing gets more and more like a chore and the quality of writing deteriorates. I think both consistency and quality/enjoyment are important, but I don’t think I’ve got the balance right just yet.
Thanks for sharing your NaNo experiences,
Tash