NaNo Analysis: Things That Help
Wednesday, November 13th, 2013 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelI'm not doing NaNo, but I am taking November as an opportunity to write up some observations from doing it last year. Any verb-tense weirdness is due to this sitting half-written on my laptop since they were current; I did mention I write slow. This is the first installment.
NaNoWriMo was among other things a data collection session for me; that extended bout of intense writing allowed me to track patterns and conditions that helped (or hurt) my writing productivity. Some of these are not exactly stunning revelations, but it's useful to be reminded of them. And some were a surprise, though perhaps they shouldn't have been.
- Start the day with writing, not with the internet. It's amazing how much more productive the day feels if I have 500 or so words under my belt before I do anything else. And the more productive the day feels, the easier it is to keep being productive. Speaking of which....
- Turn the wi-fi off. No, you don't need to just quickly check email, or see if the new post on suckmydayaway.com is up, or even hit the online thesaurus. You need to write. No, a little light web-surfing will not warm your brain up for writing; writing will warm your brain up for writing. Adding that extra step of having to turn the wifi switch back on helps you catch yourself before the "Oh, I'll just--" impulse gets loose.
- Get some sleep. A decent night's sleep had a noticeable positive effect on my productivity; more to the point, short or much-interrupted sleep had a noticeable negative effect. That might seem self-evident, but there was a time when I associated the buzz of mild sleep deprivation with a lovely alpha-state creativity burst. That may have worked when I was still doing the "only write when I feel like it" thing, or maybe I was just younger then, but for nose-to-the-keyboard real writing, being decently well-rested is the way to go.
- Keep warm. Presumably more important in the winter than in the summer, but we have a lot of winter around here. A comfy writer is a productive writer; a cold writer is a hunched-up ball of distraction and incipient depression. Warm feet seem to be especially important. Note to my future self who is reading this: I don't care how much your feet want to breathe, put on some socks.
- When in doubt, eat sushi. That lagging, pulling-words-with-pliers, this-has-stopped-being-fun, brain stuffed with hard-set superglue feeling? Raw fish will help. Seriously, both the Week 3 slump and the post-NaNo burn-out improved dramatically after a trip to AI Fusion. Hit the red & white tuna and the yellowtail, and watch the neurons turn back on.
- Get up and dance. Put on some Elvis Costello or New Radicals or whatever works, and move for five minutes. Gets the blood pumping, gets the body temp up, gets the energy flowing so the brain can make words out of it. It's not a bad way to start a session, and it's definitely a good idea after an hour or two of hunching over the keyboard, or when the word-flow starts to flag.
NaNoWriMo was among other things a data collection session for me; that extended bout of intense writing allowed me to track patterns and conditions that helped (or hurt) my writing productivity. Some of these are not exactly stunning revelations, but it's useful to be reminded of them. And some were a surprise, though perhaps they shouldn't have been.
- Start the day with writing, not with the internet. It's amazing how much more productive the day feels if I have 500 or so words under my belt before I do anything else. And the more productive the day feels, the easier it is to keep being productive. Speaking of which....
- Turn the wi-fi off. No, you don't need to just quickly check email, or see if the new post on suckmydayaway.com is up, or even hit the online thesaurus. You need to write. No, a little light web-surfing will not warm your brain up for writing; writing will warm your brain up for writing. Adding that extra step of having to turn the wifi switch back on helps you catch yourself before the "Oh, I'll just--" impulse gets loose.
- Get some sleep. A decent night's sleep had a noticeable positive effect on my productivity; more to the point, short or much-interrupted sleep had a noticeable negative effect. That might seem self-evident, but there was a time when I associated the buzz of mild sleep deprivation with a lovely alpha-state creativity burst. That may have worked when I was still doing the "only write when I feel like it" thing, or maybe I was just younger then, but for nose-to-the-keyboard real writing, being decently well-rested is the way to go.
- Keep warm. Presumably more important in the winter than in the summer, but we have a lot of winter around here. A comfy writer is a productive writer; a cold writer is a hunched-up ball of distraction and incipient depression. Warm feet seem to be especially important. Note to my future self who is reading this: I don't care how much your feet want to breathe, put on some socks.
- When in doubt, eat sushi. That lagging, pulling-words-with-pliers, this-has-stopped-being-fun, brain stuffed with hard-set superglue feeling? Raw fish will help. Seriously, both the Week 3 slump and the post-NaNo burn-out improved dramatically after a trip to AI Fusion. Hit the red & white tuna and the yellowtail, and watch the neurons turn back on.
- Get up and dance. Put on some Elvis Costello or New Radicals or whatever works, and move for five minutes. Gets the blood pumping, gets the body temp up, gets the energy flowing so the brain can make words out of it. It's not a bad way to start a session, and it's definitely a good idea after an hour or two of hunching over the keyboard, or when the word-flow starts to flag.
