I often participate in NaNoWriMo (which is National Novel Writing Month) and this year is no exception.

The fact is that every month of my life is NaNo, since the goal of NaNo is to write 50K words in a month. That’s not a novel in my corner of the fiction market, but it’s about half of one. Most months, I write new content at this rate, so November isn’t anything special. I’m using working on multiple projects at a time, as well, although I only list one on the NaNo website.

Doing NaNoWriMo is a good way to cross check my productivity, though. I tend to keep track of my page count on Post-It notes on my desk, and I do update my wall calendar each week with my progress—right alongside my goals for the week. Keeping track on the NaNo site makes me feel more accountable, and it also makes me more aware of what else is placing demands on my time. What’s interfering with writing? What am I doing instead? NaNo provides a little productivity cross-check for me each year, and helps me to refine my process.

This year, for example, I’ve written 13,000 words through Saturday. (Still taking Sundays off.) That’s not bad, but it’s less than I’d hoped to achieve in four days. I aim for 3K to 5K per day of new word count. The fact is that there was been a LOT of publishing stuff happening behind the scenes last week, so I wasn’t even starting to write until after 2PM. The problem is that mornings are my most productive time.

This week, I’m not going to check my email until lunch.

One of the speakers at NINC made an interesting comment that has stuck with me, that email is a means for other people to offload jobs to you. His strategy was to do what was important to him first, then see what other people wanted to hand off to him. It’s good advice. I just have to break my habit of checking email while I have my second cup of coffee. 🙂

You can find me on NaNo here.