NaNoWriMo 2022: Results & Thoughts
Nov. 29th, 2022 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quillpunkOn the 27th, I won NaNoWriMo!
I've won camp nano before, but it's never been more than a 20k goal. I've also done big nano before, but never gotten further than 25k words. That said, I can't back up that data because I deleted all those old projects from my nano profile. Oops. (...It felt cluttered and messy. I had to clean things up, okay.)
But this time, I won. 50k words in 27 days, with an average speed of around 1880 words per day.
I don't think I need to state again how strange that is.
Nevertheless, here's the winning method (so I don't forget next time, lol):
I never once looked at the stat page this month. I've always done that before—looked at the stat page, seen how many words I need to write per day on average (that dreaded 1667 number) and tried to adjust things for that. I've made schedules—write this many words these days, take a day off here, write this much again. And so on.
It's never worked, obviously. I'm neurodivergent, and I can't keep track of time in that manner. A month from now doesn't exist for me and neither does a week. I'm also physically disabled so some days I literally can't write at all. I even have executive dysfunction up the hoolabalooza (hello 4 AM, my old friend).
But this time, I threw all those schedules away. I never worried about the big picture, never tried to figure out how much I needed to write to keep on track. And you know, I checked my stat page once I did win; I never fell behind, even on the slower days.
In the end, it's just about writing as much as possible today. Because tomorrow neither exists nor matters, and I can't count on it. I can't plan like that. I don't think like that.
Today is the only thing that's real, that I can feel, that I can touch and affect and change.
Tomorrow doesn't exist.
...I still can't really believe I won. I don't entirely comprehend how this happened, even though I just laid it out. I wrote as much as possible every single day, and sometimes that was 3k words and sometimes it was 500, and it was always awesome. Always okay! I didn't push beyond what I felt comfortable with!
And somehow that all stacked up to 50'000 words.
That's kind of fucking incredible.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-29 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-29 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-29 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-09 05:24 pm (UTC)Congratulations!
Date: 2022-11-29 07:57 pm (UTC)Also, just because most humans use timebinding a lot, doesn't necessarily mean that 100% of them are good at it. There are others who live in the "now" from necessity or preference. In fact, there are religions that aim for it -- the "be here now" of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. That doesn't make other people less likely to complain if you're not what they want, but does let you know that you aren't alone.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-09 02:03 pm (UTC)