Creative Calm Connected: The time is now

“Things that can be done at any time are often done at no time” says the wise and inspiring Gretchen Rubin. For me, that sentence seems to hold a lot of truth. Think about where you live for example. There are fabulous things to do in the place you live, but because they are close by and you can do it anytime, often, you don’t do them at all.

I think it is the same with goals or things we want to achieve in our lives. I have always wanted to write, and that is how this blog came about. I’m very happy writing away, sharing thoughts and stories with you all. But I’ve always dreamt of writing a novel. It has been something that I have always thought I could do….someday. Well, the time is now! I don’t want all my “someday’s” to slip by and never make the time to do it. So in an effort to be creative, and connect to who it is that I want to be, I’m going to give it a go.

So why now? I have always wanted to do it. I feel like right now I have the space to try. It seemed a bit serendipitous that I discovered Bullet Journaling, started following a few random BuJo’ers, and three of them mentioned NaNoWriMo (which I had never heard of before).

National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/) is an annual event, where for each day for the month of November, you commit to writing 1,667 words. At the end of the month, you have yourself a 50,000 word novel (which is about the length of The Great Gatsby – challenging but achievable). There is a supportive community online with other writers who are taking up the challenge, so you don’t feel like you are doing it alone.

What a great idea! Just four weeks commitment and I might achieve a goal I’ve had for a long time. I want my children to see that you can achieve what you want to out of life. I am trying to teach my perfectionist son that it is ok to just give it a go, do your best, even if what comes out of it isn’t worthy of public consumption! Maybe, I can inspire someone else to have a go at something they have been putting off until “the right time”. The right time is now everyone!

I am under no illusions that it will be easy. I am going to have to sacrifice other activities in order to achieve 50,000 words. However, I really, really am keen to give it a go. I just want to know if I can actually write that many words! I’m not even sure yet what it is that my novel will be about, I plan to just sit and write each day and see what comes. I’ve read some books by authors who plan their novel from the beginning, but I think for this first go, I’m just going to wing it. Who knows…. Maybe my 50,000 words will be the beginnings of a number of novels. I’m not sure exactly where the month will take me, but I’m very much looking forward to giving it a red hot go! Even if nothing spectacular comes out of this first month of writing, it will set up a good writing habit for me that might lead to something better.

So if I’m a bit quieter than usual, please forgive me!

Normally I would be a bit quiet about this kind of challenge and not share that I was planning to do it with the world. I guess we all face the fear of failure, and often I think it doesn’t matter if I fail and I’m the only one to know about it. I have recently discovered that I am an Obliger in Gretchen Rubin’s 4 Tendencies framework (see this post about it here or go to her website here). Rubin’s book Better than Before outlines the four tendencies and strategies that might be helpful for each in building and maintaining habits. I really enjoyed the book and have found it useful in knowing myself better and finding ways to make life easier.

Obligers have no trouble meeting external accountability, but find it difficult to meet inner expectations (so we are awesome at meeting work deadlines, but find it hard to keep our own New Year’s resolutions). Rubin suggests one of the ways for Obligers to succeed is to impose external accountability on themselves (join Weight Watchers if you are trying to lose weight, go to the gym with a friend if you are trying to be fitter, be in a book club if your goal is to read more etc.). And that is why I have signed up to NaNoWriMo and am sharing my goal here. I have to regularly check in with NaNoWriMo informing them of my word count, and I will do the same with you here with a weekly post about how I am going. Feel free to message me or comment on the blog to keep me accountable and encourage me to keep going. I am really hoping Rubin is right and that having this external accountability will be the thing that makes this new habit stick.

I am imposing a rule on myself this month to never miss two days of writing in a row. Sometimes, life gets in the way, and I just won’t be able to get it done. If I miss more than one day, it will be just too hard to catch up and I will likely stop. So please encourage me to keep up the momentum!

I would love to hear what are things are on your list to do anytime/sometime? Want to join me in committing to doing it sometime in November? Do you have any ideas for plot lines for my novel? Or interesting characters you would like to see feature in the story? Would you like to join in NaNoWriMo with me? Comment below or on the Creative Calm Connected Facebook page.