Setting Goals Too High: NaNoWriMo 2016 Prep

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the goals I set for myself. I have this habit of setting goals that I have no real hope of achieving as a means to confirm all my self doubt that I never had a chance to begin with. It's a self defeating habit that feels like a warm blanket to the lazy. I've used this as a way to explain to myself that I'm bad at following through; which aside from being a questionable fact at best, it only leads to further discouragement and fewer goals achieved. This is a bad habit and I recognize my own fault in it.

I've realized that I need to start building smaller habits, setting smaller more achievable goals, and allow myself the grace of defeat without a mass degradation of my self worth. I'm starting with simple things that focus on my general health: drinking more water, more consistent bed time, more consistent with my pre-bike ride stretching, try to get more done after work, etc. I feel like accomplishing some of the smaller goals, establishing better habits surrounding the mundane things in my life, will make getting to the more important things easier. It's like getting a running start at the things I want to get done.

To that end, I can't help noticing that over the past few years my efforts towards creative writing have dwindled a great deal. It could have something to do with my youthful dreams growing older and being wet blanketed by reality. It could be that the creative part of me was replaced by the practical part of me that wants to get along happily more than it wants the world to understand me. Or might also have something to do with all the RPG GMing I'm doing and the write ups I'm doing for those are soaking up brain juices left and right. Whatever the cause, it has been a long time since I tried to write any poetry and even longer since I tried writing any fiction. Naturally I thought there's no better way to get back into it than a panicked 30 day writing session for as of yet not conceived novel for National Novel Writing Month this November.

I've never tried it before: writing a novel. I've definitely never tried to write a novel in a month, but this year I'm going to try. I don't have any idea what the novel is going to be about or how I'll get 50,000 words out of a month. I don't know that I've ever tried writing 1,700 words a day for 30 days, or whether or not I'm physically capable of getting that many words out each day. That's why I'm starting early with my efforts to get some prep work in.

I spend so much time thinking about how to tell stories in RPGs that I am running. I want to translate that into solo fiction if at all possible. Between now and when I start on November 1, 2016 I want to come up with my rules for writing without brakes. I have a habit of editing as I go; which will be the death of this effort if I really try it.  I need to not do that for this. I want to see if I can try to test some of my GM-ing techniques with the solo-fiction I am writing. The entire whole effort will shove me out of my comfort zone enough that I'll hopefully have something to show for it.

Until next time, I'll be brainstorming ideas on how to keep going.