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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  17d ago (text post)   228 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for December 3, 2024

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Saturday was November 30th, the last day of NaNoWriMo. I made it, 50k words in the bank.

I am both very surprised and quite proud I didn't give up partway through: I've become a far more disciplined person than I used to be. While it was a busy month, I was pleased to find that it wasn't a gruelling chore throughout: while there absolutely were days when it felt like pulling teeth, even quite late in the game there were plenty of passages which I found quite fun to write.

Sunday was a well-earned Sabbath day. As I mentioned, I realised quite early on that the story I'd envisioned would not fit inside 50,000 words, and right now I'm feeling like a first draft will be as long as 80k, or even 90. My plan is to write at least 1,000 words a day during the week and take the weekends off (unless inspiration strikes). At that rate I should have a first draft by the middle of January, or the end of the month at the latest.

I've become a far more disciplined person than I used to be.

Care to elaborate? I'd love to hear more about this process.

I'm afraid I can't say much that would be of use to a third party. I don't really know how I became more disciplined, I just know that I did.

But I think a big component was setting myself long-term goals which I'd publicly pre-committed to by setting them for myself as part of a group. During Covid I got into running, and a couple I know suggested that the three of us sign up for a marathon. I decided to do it. I think the fact that it was a group activity made a big difference: if I'd just privately signed up to do it myself I wouldn't have lost face if I'd decided to back out after a few weeks of training.

How have you been doing @Southkraut?

Sick, working, dad-ing, husband-ing, preparing christmas presents, organizing couples therapy and talking to a lawyer.

I somewhat doubt that there'll be much worth hearing from me for the remainder of the year, but please keep it up regardless if it's no bother for you.

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