GYWO: To join or not to join

[owlmoose]

The time is coming where I have to decide whether to sign up for getyourwordsout for 2014. This is my fourth year of participation, and the first time I will have missed my goal. (I have almost 17,000 words to go, which is technically doable -- I'd have to average just over a thousand words a day, which I've done in two week bursts before, but given that I now have drafts of every major project due before the end of the year, and a trip coming up, I just don't see myself generating that much new copy.) But even if I'd made my goal, I'd still probably be questioning whether I should continue.

The first time I signed up for GYWO, I wasn't actually expecting to hit the 200,000 word goal (the lowest option at the time). I joined to give myself some structure (reporting monthly word counts) and in hopes that I would find motivation in being part of a community of writers. As it turns out, I never really got involved with the community, and -- like many other communities on LJ -- the community has also become less interactive over the years. However, I feel like it served its other intended purpose quite well: the long-term wordcount goals, coupled with the monthly goals I gave myself, kept me writing through the dry spells, which is something I used to have real trouble doing.

The last three years I wrote 200k words (including 2011, when I only signed up for 150,000) and blew past my goal before the end of November, or even sooner. This year, I have struggled, falling well below monthly targets every month from July through October. I did well in November, but it was like pulling teeth. Not so much with writing at all, but to write in any sustained sort of way, enough to get decent wordcounts. Which has me wondering: do I really want to stress about wordcounts? Shouldn't my goal be to create stories and meta posts, then craft them into a finished, postable form?

So I'm wondering if I should move away from number of words written as a goal. Not to stop tracking them -- I think making note of which days I've written, what I've been working on, and approximately how many words I wrote and/or edited each day, has been both motivating and rewarding for me. But maybe I no longer need this giant number looming over my head. Especially not now that I've joined the ushobwri community, which has weekly check-ins and loose, more self-directed goals. And at least so far, it's more interactive, which is nice. (If you're looking for a low-pressure writing community, and are okay with being on an LJ comm, I definitely recommend checking it out.) Would that be enough to keep me setting goals and writing, without the stricter structure of GYWO? It's worth thinking about, anyway.

Comments

[pete_thomas]

One exercise you might want to try is take a six month segment of your writing, and, with a physical (or electronic, if you prefer) calendar, jot down what your word counts for those days were (similar to what you mentioned above). Then you can kind of see a trend of your writing, and understand when you are writing, how much is coming out, and maybe even understand why. Then, you don't use the word counts as a goal, but more as a tool to say "Okay, the reason things are slow is because I'm ALWAYS slow on Sundays, but I usually pick it up on Tuesdays so we're good" and it's less demotivational than looking at it as "OH GOODNESS MY WORD COUNT IS NONEXISTENT!!!!"

If you track back, you can get an idea of what it has been like, but of course, you can just start with now and look forward from here.

I was trying to find a way to tie in what you've been writing about, but my brain says "Haha, try to think when I'm not ready to, will ye?" So no more thoughts. :D

[owlmoose]

I've been tracking word counts on a daily and monthly basis for years now, using a Google Docs spreadsheet (and then I copy/paste the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet each month to make the charts in my monthly goals posts). And it is a useful way to look at patterns -- March and February used to be slow months, and then I'd see a spike when I had a bunch of projects due in late spring/early fall. The calendar's gotten less predictable this year, though, and not having a job has (as you might expect) changed my habits a lot. But it's true that I haven't done any serious number crunching with the data in awhile, and it might be interesting to do so.

[pete_thomas]

I thought I remembered seeing something of the sort before, and you're right. It's by no means definitive, but even during the times when your word counts get sporadic and unpredictable, you might even be able to figure out why that's happening too.

Hey you never know, it may be fun to look at. :)

[butthefuturerefused]

Semi-ironically, this led directly to my signing up for GYWO.

[owlmoose]

This does not actually surprise me too much. ;) It really is a good tool, if that's how you get motivated.

[lassarina]

I'm having similar thoughts about NaNoWriMo lately, actually: whether it's good for me. I can't tell, but I'm...slowly starting to suspect no. That being said, though, I'd need something else to hold me to origfic word count, and I'm not sure GYWO gets there.

Good luck next year. ♥

[owlmoose]

Wow, you've been doing NaNo for a long time, though, right? Would it be difficult to give it up?

I've never even thought seriously about doing NaNo, mostly because I am pretty sure that forcing myself on a sprint that concentrated would not work well (and also November is almost always a terrible time for it).

I have to admit, part of the reason I'm reluctant to give up GYWO is just because I've done it so long. It's a habit, it's comfortable (although a little less so this year, now that I'm missing the goal). Like posting every day in November, it's just what I do. On the other hand, I was hating the commitment to post every day in November this year, so maybe that's a sign...

[lassarina]

Yeah, I've been doing NaNo a while. This was my ninth attempt and seventh consecutive win (I started in 2003 and wrote a laughable 2k, skipped 2004, managed 8K in 2005, won in 2006, skipped 2007, won in 2008, and have won every year since then.) It would indeed be really hard to give it up; at this point I use it as my "more or less guaranteed 50K of publishable fiction" carrot-stick combination. But I've been doing a lot of talking with cypher and others this year, and I don't think the way I treat myself during November is healthy; also, because of the way my brain really likes to move goalposts, I no longer count it as success if I "just" win. cypher pointed out that I have solidly proven I can spit out words to meet a deadline, and that it might be time to prove I can walk away, which is probably more accurate than I am willing to admit.

The first NaNoWriMo was apparently in July! But they decided it wasn't hard enough, so moved it to November (which is....really side-eye worthy for a whole host of reasons relating to privilege of various types, but.)

I missed my GYWO goal...two? years ago? And I will have to push a bit to hit it this year, but I think I can do it (there's still Yuletide, etc.) I'm actually thinking of signing up next year for my standard 200K, and trying to use it to form good writing habits relating to consistency instead of my usual "sprint for 10K in a weekend, take a month off" method, and NOT allowing myself to use the "if I do 50K in November" counting method. I'll give myself the first six months of the year to see if I can adequately write origfic without NaNo beating me over the head. It should be an interesting experiment.