Compete with yourself to achieve great things.
I won National Novel Writing Month 7 years in a row. All I had to do was write 50,000 words during November.
This taught me an unrelenting discipline, and to stay ahead of the curve. If I just wrote 1,500 words a day, I’d stay on track. If I slipped for a few days I’d have to catch up and that was no fun.
So every day I came home and wrote my 1,500 words.
I didn’t respond to emails. I ignored the news or holiday drama. The only thing that mattered was getting words on the page. Do you know how freeing that is?
In 2018, I wrote 90,000 words in five weeks. That was my last year. I haven’t achieved this level of productivity since then, because writing novels are hard.
So I edited my wife’s 170,000 word sci-fi romance novel.
Four times.
A competition is a reason to train. I highly recommend trying National Novel Writing Month in November. It’s a great reason to write and ignore all the problems of the world.
