November is finally over and hopefully so is your novel. If you’re anything like me, that means you’ve spent half the weekend celebrating and the other half catching up on sleep, and now you’re getting ready to dive into your December projects. It means you have time to get back to all those things you were neglecting this November. It means you can slow down your writing to give yourself time to focus on those things–your friends, your family, sleep.
But how do you slow down without losing momentum completely? It’s hard–and the fact that I’m writing this post now, after having spent the last two days in a coma, is proof of that–but it can be done, even with the holiday season looming over your head with a thousand distractions. Over the nine years I’ve spent doing Nanowrimo, I’ve learned quite a bit about keeping some of that November momentum, and I thought I’d share some tips with you today.
1. Have a set to-do list for the month. In order to stay organized during December, you’ll need a list of things that you’d like to accomplish this month. However, in the interest of being able to write in January and taking into account the holidays, you don’t want this list to be too long. It needs to include just enough to challenge you without making you continue the break neck pace of November. My own list only has four things on it: finish editing Moonshadow’s Guardian, get all the content written for a free e-book I’m working on, write a query for a shorter project, and write a new short story. These goals are enough to keep me busy all month without drowning in the amount of work I have to do.
If you’re unsure about where your balance is, put less on the list than you’re naturally inclined to. It’s totally normal to think you can accomplish more than is realistic. So to find the perfect balance, write the list of things you’d ideally like to accomplish this month, and then cross two or three things off the list. What’s left over is bound to be more realistic than what you were thinking.
2. Have designated writing time. It should be easy to implement a writing schedule since your family’s already gotten used to the idea. My suggestion is to take half the time you spent writing in November and dedicate that to writing in December. This way, you’ll have a little more time for your family and other needs, but you’ll still have a set time during which you work on your writing.
3. Don’t take too many days off. Now that there’s no deadline looming over your head, it’s easy to miss days and to fill up your writing time with events or even just with TV. But once you’ve started taking days off, it’s hard to get back into the routine. While it’s a good idea to take some days off this month–say, for example, you might decide not to write on Christmas Eve–too many will totally destroy your discipline. This is most dangerous if you take several days off in a row.
Personally, I find that taking a couple days off doesn’t hurt my discipline, but if I take more than three days off in a row it instantly becomes a lot harder to get back into the routine. So I never take more than two days off, and even on my days off I try to write something–a short scene, a descriptive paragraph, whatever I have the time and energy to write. Make sure you don’t spend too much time away from your work this month, or you’ll find it much harder to keep a writing routine in January.
4. Plan your writing time. By this I mean not to plan what hours of the day you’ll use to write–that’s what #2 is all about–but to plan what you’re going to do with that writing time each day. During Nanowrimo it’s easy. Your goal is already set for you: 1, 667 words every day. After Nano, it’s easy to get sidetracked and start working on things that don’t really matter. To combat this, create a daily to-do list.
Your daily to-do list should include goals that help you complete your monthly to-do list and should be balanced so that you’re not over working yourself. For me a typical daily to-do list includes things like write a blog post, edit three pages of Moonshadow’s Guardian and brainstorm future story ideas. I usually find I can complete about 4-5 items in my writing time, more if I’m really focused or if I have nothing to do but write after I get home from school.
Create your own list by breaking your monthly goals into chunks and figuring out what you can do every day to get closer to those goals. Don’t create your lists too far in advance though–I find the best time to create my to-do list for one day is right before bed the night before. This way, you can account for the fact that you’ll have different amounts of writing time on different days. For example, my to-do lists are always shorter on Tuesdays because I go to my writing group on Tuesday evenings. Remember to account for whatever events you have to go to when creating your own list.
These are just a handful of tips to help you remain productive in December and beyond. While today I mention them specifically to help you keep your November momentum, they’re good tips to keep in mind at any time of year. And while this is what works for me, different things work for different people–don’t be afraid to keep trying new ways of managing your time until you find one that works for you.
Oh, and one more thing–congratulations, guys, you survived another crazy Nanowrimo adventure!
