motivation – Page 2 – J. Lynn Rowan

Happy July! I am currently thrilled for the following reasons:

I am officially done with everything school related until August 16th (other than going in to check my mail and water my plants).
A friend of mine from high school has asked me to make pies and Italian cookies for her wedding in August, which is going to keep me rather busy (but I have a plan!).
Last night I finished revising and editing the first half of my manuscript, thus completing a draft of what must be the first book (of two). More on that another time.
At the end of the month, the hubs and I will be heading to Gettysburg to do some serious feeding of my inner history geek.
Did I mention I’m on summer vacation?

Well, turns out I have another reason to be excited, especially now that I’ve finished that huge chunk of R&E and can take a smallish break from my “darling”.

You’ve all heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), right? You should have – I posted about it in November. You know, it’s the month when you go crazy and try to hammer out a 50k novel in 30 days? Yeah, that’s NaNoWriMo.

Well, did you know there’s a July version of it? JulNoWriMo!

Yes, July Novel Writing Month is upon us. The “contest” identifies itself as being “just like NaNoWriMo – only hotter.” Because it’s July. And in the northern hemisphere at least, that’s summer. Which is usually hotter than November.

Unless you live in the tropics.

There are a few small differences. First of all, you get 31 days to write instead of only 30. Hey, that one day could make or break someone’s word count! Second, the website is little more than its forums. There are some resource pages, but overall, it’s a community website, and other than the spot in your profile to update your word count (and you’re on the honor system, by the way) and story summary, there isn’t a place to “share” anything about your book (at least not that I’ve seen yet). For NaNo, you can give a lot more info about your book, including an excerpt, and the whole website is, well, more than its forums.

The biggest difference is that NaNoWriMo (the November WriMo) specifically states in its “rules” that you cannot write one word of narrative before November 1st. You can outline, you can plot, you can draw pictures of your characters screaming in terror at the prospect of literary mayhem without your inner editor to hold the reins. But for the July WriMo, the rules are a little relaxed on that score. I quote from the “About” page:

“Does [my novel] have to be a new novel, or can I continue my other novel? – As far as we’re concerned, this shouldn’t matter. If you want to finish a novel you’re already working on, great! Just write 50,000 more words.”

Now I personally think it would still be cheating if you pulled out a novel-in-progress that’s already at the 45k word mark and declare after a week, “I’m done!” That defeats the purpose. But if you have, say, only 2k words written, I guess you could theoretically start with that and not be breaking the rules. Especially if you do some revising of that first two thousand words.

As with NaNo, JulNoWriMo has no prizes for completing your novel, other than the self-satisfaction of, well completing your novel. But here’s why I’m particularly excited about this.

See, I’ve had this story idea brewing since, oh, 2005, and other than a hastily scribbled chapter in a notebook, done on vacation that summer, I’ve never done anything with it. A couple weeks ago, I resurrected the chapter and played around a bit. Since this little work in progress is still nascent, I could be persuaded that I am breaking no rules by using this story.

Here’s my plan, people.

I’m going to use JulNoWriMo to hammer out this new little darling. Thanks to my handy-dandy writing software, which allows me to project a desired word count and then figures daily averages and whatnot, I need to write approximately 1500 words a day to finish by July 31st. Then – watch out, novel contests and agents and small publishers! I might just send that baby your way!

Can I do it? No idea. But it will give me a break from my “big baby” for a while.

I admit openly that I’ve been wallowing a bit this past week. Okay, wallowing a lot. I generally try not to wallow over things but….

It may be rather clear to those of you who’ve read my previous post as to the cause of said wallowing. And those of you who’ve made the connection would, I hope, agree that I’ve got the right to wallow a bit just now.

However, I don’t like wallowing, and I need to figure out how to stop.

Motivation is a tricky thing in all things literary. I had ample motivation to sit at the computer and write for the first month or so of summer vacation, just not the physical stamina to do so for long enough periods of time. Now I’ve got the stamina and no motivation. I did manage to plunk out the first scene in Chapter 42 (after having gone back to the original version of that scene, which I think I wrote when I was about fifteen or sixteen, and almost gagging with the immaturity of it) and it turned out to be pretty decent. Unfortunately, due to the wallowing, all I want to do right now is skip around and write all the sad scenes that are left and save the happy scenes for when I’m done wallowing.

But that’s not really how I write. I’ve been known in the past to scribble out a future scene (admittedly during high school study halls, in boring college lecture hall classes when I was supposed to be taking notes, waiting for a connecting flight at the airport….) but I don’t write by jumping around. Though I have everything outlined, I still have to write in a linear fashion because too much skipping around can lead, in my experience at least, to plot inconsistencies and inaccuracies. So I’m stuck plodding through the happy scenes I have no motivation to write.

Motivation is necessary in life, too. My husband and I had the most powerful motivation in the world to finish our indoor construction/remodeling projects, but now some of those things have really fallen by the wayside. My husband, in fact, actually threw out the “Things To Do Before _____” list, citing that we can make a new list. When we get new motivation?

My wallowing has severely damaged my motivation for life right now. Just about the only thing that’s got me up moving around today is the fact that we’re going to Disney World tomorrow, and somebody needs to pack.

I made a decision yesterday, however, about motivation and my life.

I’m going to lose five pounds.

For someone who loves to cook and bake (and eat), that is no small thing.

I don’t necessarily need to lose five pounds – I’m within the healthy weight range for my age and height – but I should lose five pounds. I think I’d feel better all around if I did. Losing five pounds would put me back where I was on my wedding day and, shallow as it sounds, I felt really pretty and amazing on my wedding day.

What it will take, however, to get me to lose five pounds is another matter of motivation entirely.