NaNoWriMo - How I Stayed Motivated Through 60,000 Words

On December 1, I returned to the blogging page and to social media after a 30-day pause. 

I decided to pause new content creation because I'm working on a big personal project — a book. You can read more about the purposeful pause here.

I treaded back in carefully, and I am more excited than ever to share some of the lessons with you — big and small.

When in conversations with other people, some business owners, some not, they all looked at me shocked, “Wow! How do you make the time?” and “That’s a huge undertaking.”

My response — you make the time for things that matter, and yes, writing a book is a big project.

I’m thrilled to share with you that I finished more than I had planned.  

On November 1, I was looking at a mess of book edits, additions, and rewrites. My goal was to get “mostly done.” And great news — I got “done-done!”

Numbers nerd? Here are some figures for you:

• I touched my book 29 out of 30 days — I took the 17th off, a Sunday, because it was packed with kid and home stuff

• 27:32:26 — the total time I spent working on the book. Break that down, and that works out to a little less than an hour a day

• 61,721 — total words edited, added, and tweaked in the book

• 14,292 — total words removed from the book (and there were 55,000 when I started)

Today, lots of people are asking me, “How did you stay motivated?”

I gave this lots of thought, and here are my answers!

1. No new content creation.
   On the bright side of removing 14,000 words, many of those essays can become new blog posts. By focusing my month on a single creative project, I could stay in the zone. I maintained all my client work but wrote no new blog content for my website. I also could have scheduled content to go out, but then, I’d want to engage with the readers who were commenting on my content, so instead, I chose to stay quiet.
   

2. Pausing social media.
   Without the pretty pictures, new ideas, and all the time spent scrolling, liking posts, and thinking about all the new ideas, I’d have so much time and energy to focus on my work. I have many more lessons on this topic that I’ll share later, but for now, I can tell you that pausing on social media was one of the top things that contributed to my focus and motivation. I’d log in daily for client-related work, and my eyes would land on the occasional post, and I’d mostly smile because I knew that I was better off working on my book.

3. Tracking my time.
   I track all my work time and have since my management consulting days. Initially, I resisted the idea of tracking my time for book writing. I tried talking myself out of it, telling myself it was a creative project and I shouldn’t track my time for creative time. I’m glad I ignored my inner critic voice and logged every minute on the book.
   

4. Writing Community Co-Writing Sessions
   Inside the Intuitive Writing School Community, I host weekly, often twice weekly, co-writing sessions for members to get their writing done. These sessions happen on Zoom, we declare our writing project, and then we write for two hours, pausing to check in halfway through and right before we break.
   
   During some of those sessions, I’d spend at least an hour of our two-hour session working on my book. The feeling of sitting with a handful of other amazing humans who were also focused on a project — whether they were working on a book, website copy, blog content, or email newsletters, there’s some massive momentum in those sessions that some members call magical, and I agree.
   

5. Keeping a daily diary.
   At the end of each day or when I’d finish a writing session, I’d record a video, no longer than five minutes, documenting my achievement for the day, where I struggled, some funky themes coming up for me, big a-ha moments, and the emotional journey that doing a big round of edits on a personal book took me through.
   
   There were many nights when I’d end up doing my writing on the couch and would forget to capture a daily video and would hit record and share my thoughts with my phone while lying in bed.
   

6. My editor was waiting.
   I had a deadline to get her my updates, and she’s booked out months in advance, so you bet I’m going to keep that date because I want to get it done!
   

7. The deep satisfaction of finishing.
   That last squeeze out of the toothpaste tube, that last square of toilet paper, that last drop of wine (okay, well, maybe not the last one) — I am a finisher. I love using up every last drop of something. And in the case of this book, I’m balancing restraint between telling you every little detail of my life with sharing helpful advice and emptying everything I have.
   
   Since I started this project two years ago, I was ready to finish talking about the creation of it, and get it done and out there. After telling enough people and declaring it here, it was time. 

Motivation also requires commitment. Sure, you can muscle your way to doing anything, but when it comes to my work and especially my writing — it has to feel good and be fun for me. Sure, there are some mundane things I do in my work, but those are becoming less and less.

A big project, like a book, takes commitment. And not just at the beginning and committing ahead of time to doing the work. It’s about committing every time you show up, especially when you don’t want to. You commit to your craft over and over and over.

Update for 2021: My book is finally in the world! Order Unfussy Life: An Intuitive Approach to Navigating Change.

Are you struggling to stay motivated this NaNoWriMo? November 1 isn’t a natural start date — you’ll get more words for your effort when you start with the new moon.

That’s what we do in Finding Flow — we start November 1 ⤵️