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Nov. 13th, 2010 03:23 pmWhen I am feeling vaguely sane about NaNo, I tell myself that the end wordcount is secondary, that the primary goal is to try.
Most of the rest of the time, I am flailing because of one or more of the following: a) I am behind on overall wordcount; b) I am behind on that day's wordcount (I have not gotten anything decent in terms of daily count since the 3k+ on the 6th, generally not getting to even 1k); c) I don't know where the story's going; d) I am not trying hard enough; e) I keep getting distracted with other things, like iPads and WoWs and ebzs and yulechats and ravelrys and staring at ceilings and talking with roommates and ... lots of stuff.
d and e are the worst, I think. It doesn't help that I was brought up with the mantra of The Most Important Thing Is That You Try Your Hardest (which is, as it turns out, a really bad thing to instill in a perfectionist, especially a lazy perfectionist); the rational part of me knows that it is impossible to put 110% of effort into everything all the time, but rational has nothing to do with it. I was also raised with the mantra of Work Now, Play After (applicable to both homework/room-cleaning before playing/reading/etc and to proper food before dessert), which makes it really hard for me to justify to myself things like taking funbreaks before I have my wordcount for the day. I also have a trained instinct to shift goalposts ("you can have a reward at 15k total words. *hits 15k* but 1k for today isn't that much farther, you can push a little more can't you?"), which is bad form.
*sigh*
(of course, the sanest choice for nano is not even trying to do it, but never mind that.)
Most of the rest of the time, I am flailing because of one or more of the following: a) I am behind on overall wordcount; b) I am behind on that day's wordcount (I have not gotten anything decent in terms of daily count since the 3k+ on the 6th, generally not getting to even 1k); c) I don't know where the story's going; d) I am not trying hard enough; e) I keep getting distracted with other things, like iPads and WoWs and ebzs and yulechats and ravelrys and staring at ceilings and talking with roommates and ... lots of stuff.
d and e are the worst, I think. It doesn't help that I was brought up with the mantra of The Most Important Thing Is That You Try Your Hardest (which is, as it turns out, a really bad thing to instill in a perfectionist, especially a lazy perfectionist); the rational part of me knows that it is impossible to put 110% of effort into everything all the time, but rational has nothing to do with it. I was also raised with the mantra of Work Now, Play After (applicable to both homework/room-cleaning before playing/reading/etc and to proper food before dessert), which makes it really hard for me to justify to myself things like taking funbreaks before I have my wordcount for the day. I also have a trained instinct to shift goalposts ("you can have a reward at 15k total words. *hits 15k* but 1k for today isn't that much farther, you can push a little more can't you?"), which is bad form.
*sigh*
(of course, the sanest choice for nano is not even trying to do it, but never mind that.)
