It’s getting to be that time again. The eleventh Month– NaNoWriMo. (What do you mean it’s not called NaNoWriMo? Don’t be silly. Of course it is. Fine, fine..) Otherwise “properly” titled as November.
For ME, it’s NaNoWriMo.
Hard to believe it’s come by so fast. Seems like just yesterday I was doing it, and it’s come around again.
At any rate, I promised myself I’d keep myself to task with this blog, and so even though I wasn’t sure what to post, I thought, why not come pop in over on this, talk about my troubles with the holiday/month and other writing woes?
Here’s my biggest one: During November, I also work Peak. These are what Amazon.com calls “Blackout Days”, and even though Peak does not officially start until Black Friday, Blackout Days start in the beginning of November. Usually this is when Amazon shifts those with a fourty-hour workweek to a fifty, fifty-five, or sixty hour workweek instead.
Let me assure you that writing for NaNo with work hours like that is pretty painful and continue on. I’ve tried it; it’s bad.
For the past few years, I’ve worked a part-time shift, where they cannot actually force me to work more than Saturday and Sunday, which helps considerably, but being on your feet for ten-plus hours a day makes it nearly impossible to write when you get home. You’re physically exhausted– and at Amazon, mentally exhausted as well.
What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo, for a reminder, is equipped with a goal of writing fifty-thousand words in thirty days. It sounds easy, right? But when you sit down to write those words, sometimes it’s not, and you’re pinching pennies right up until the deadline.
Now take your weekends out. No writing there.
This year, removing my weekends removes ten days. Included in those ten missing days is both the first two and last two days of the month.
Sure, it makes the number now very neat, but it’s still a ten day negative for my previous plans. To meet the goal, I can do no less than two-thousand and five hundred words a day.
And yet: I haven’t missed a 50k wordcount yet, and I do not plan to start now.
Join me in my suffering of NaNoWriMo, everyone! I know we can do it together.
–Natasha
Author Natasha York 