Today I am thankful for Ibuprofen and Visine.
It is Day 14 into the madness that is NaNoWriMo.
My back, arms and wrists hurt. My ever-widening ass is numb and imprinted with the mesh of my chair pad. My eyes feel like they’ve been laid out to dry in the sun and buffed with sandpaper.
On weekends, I spend six hours minimum in front of my computer. On weekdays, I sit at my computer for two hours in the mornings, before I go to work and sit at their computer for eight hours.
And now, my employer just made overtime mandatory. So now I must add an additional five hours to the ten a day I’m already sitting.
As my saintly supporter1 Kevin would say, let’s do the math.
Eleven hours per day, five days per week. On weekends, six hours per day.
That’s 67 hours per week sitting at my computer.
I do not believe the human body is meant to sit on its ass for such appallingly long stretches, although we’ve spent the last fifty years or so doing our best to change that with the television.
In any case, says Kevin, let’s continue with our math.
I have exactly 6,000 words, which makes me 15,658 words behind schedule. To reach 50K words by the end of the month, I need to write 2,020 every day.
If I can manage 1,000 words per hour and maybe a few more on the weekend…. I just. might. make it.
And it better be a best-seller because I’ll need the money for extensive physical therapy.
Oh, alright - and cognitive therapy, too. Who am I kidding.
- No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, creator of NaNoWriMo [↩]
5 Responses to “Today I am thankful for Ibuprofen and Visine.”
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I’m really proud of you for sticking with this. All the sacrifices you’re making…
Your poor eyes - mine hurt at the thought of it.
I know what you mean. NaNoWriMo is a fading memory at this point. I have been doing 5 x 9 days and I cannot sit at the computer any longer. My shoulders, neck, and back are incredibly sore by the end of the day. The only thing that can relieve the pressure is to have a stiletto wearing tap dancing midget go to town on my back.
Hmmmm. Plot ideas….
It’s all right. Completing the ms in 30 days will not end the war in Iraq, nor bring an end to global warming. The effort you have made is sufficient unto itself. You have exercised discipline if not your glutes, and I suspect you have learned from the experience.
The key here, I think, is not to stop at the end of the 30 days. Not that you should chain yourself to your desk day in and day out, but that you should continue setting aside time to write and to write on this or some other ms. Not as a marathon, but as you wash your face, brush your teeth, eat your meals, sleep at night - as a part of your daily routine to spend 1 hour or 2 hours writing.
Writing is a craft, and so it will improve with practice. There’s only one way to get practice. And no, you won’t be going to Carnegie Hall.
wait! did you really do the math?
50,000 - 6,000 = 15,658 - I will go ask Paul, who, by the way, is now a 4-eyes like his auntie.
Uppitysis, I was waiting for someone to ask me about the math.
By the end of day 13, I am supposed to have written 21,658 words if I was to be on track for making 50K by day 30. So 21,658 minus my 6000 is 15,658. I sure hope Paul got Eric’s math genes!