Double Duty!

Hello you breakfast smoothie.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!  And today's dispatch is doing double duty: since it is the first Sunday after November, today is my (somewhat) triumphant return to the Earnest Platypus weekly dispatches --- and an enormous THANK YOU to Leah, Jenn, Tara and Dad/Rob for their excellent posts over the past 4 weeks! They bravely answered the call, and shared some really thought-provoking and personal reflections with the community. It was such a pleasure reading your entries!

But today is important because it is also the first day of December.... and you know what time it is... 

Festive Platypus time!

So welcome also to the first entry for the 2019 Festive Platypus digital advent calendar!  For those who have signed up for the Festive Platypus, starting today-- and for the next 24 days-- your inbox will be peppered with some of my favourite things from the past 12 months. The Sunday entries will continue to be longer-form dispatches, while the entries the remainder of the week will be short and sweet little daily nuggets for you to enjoy.

And for those who have signed up only for the weekly dispatches, don't worry! You will continue to only receive the longer-form Sunday dispatches without having your inbox cluttered the rest of the week.

PS: If you are not sure where you stand, you can update your preferences/ check your subscription status with the link at the bottom of this newsletter. Or feel free to email me directly by replying to this dispatch if you have any questions or issues. 

With all of those logistics out of the way... It's true. I am back. It was a fascinating month, and I am sure many of you are wondering about my November writing experiment with NaNoWriMo 2019. Did I reach the 50K word count? Do I have a novel ready to publish? Am I gigantic literary success?

Well the answer to all of these is no: I did not, I do not and I am not.

But I did write over 15,000 words this month which is enormous for me as a first time author-wannabe (and general busybody who doesn't do a good job of boxing her time), and I learned a TON about what it actually takes to write a novel while also having a 'real life'. I am going to continue writing and working on the book in 2020, but I wanted to share a few of the things I learned through the experience, many of which apply to life in general interestingly.

1. Silencing your inner editor

A big focus of NaNoWriMo is not to write a Pulitzer-winning work of genius in a month, but to simply to get your words down on paper without judgement. It's a numbers game, and is all about the flow, letting the story come and allowing the words-- as many of them as possible-- to exist on the page, giving you something to work with and refine later.

And so I tried to flow this month. But as a lover of words, it was tough in the beginning to quiet the 'fancy' voice in my head-- that one that looooooves how things sound-- and instead focus on the word count. It is such a luxury to play with words, and with this extra permission to write creatively, I found it difficult to want to abandon the mellifluous 'playing' of writing to do the actual slog-ish 'work' of writing. But after experimenting this month, I really came to value the practice of getting things out rather than trying to get them right.

And not just because I was chasing the word count. I have been doing a bit of reading about the pursuit of excellence versus perfection, and while I have never been much of a perfectionist, I can be a bit of a control freak. This practice of letting go of judgement was really freeing for my writing practice and the mental energy I was bringing to the effort. As the article outlines, “I’ve come to learn perfection is something I do for others, and excellence is something I do for myself.”

While I don't think I excelled at the effort and I am still learning a lot about how to write well, I did find that varying the attention being paid to quality or quantity of writing-- rather than trying to do both at the same time-- was a really valuable lesson that I will be taking forward with me.

2. Taking non-novel-writing off your plate is not enough

I LOVED reading the posts from friends and family this month. And as much as I do enjoy writing these dispatches, it was nice to have some head space freed up to focus on other kinds of writing.

But friends, I was SO NAIVE to think that putting a pause on this one piece of work would allow me the full range of mental, psychological and lifestyle resources needed to really succeed at NaNoWriMo. In short, it is not just about creating space to write. As we will see below, it is also about creating habits and expectations and dedicated pushes to make writing happen.

And so I learned a lot about how I want to organize myself moving forward in my day-to-day efforts to make progress, as well as having a clearer sense of what it is going to take from me to really make finishing this novel a priority. Including factoring in at least a few little mini writing retreats for myself in 2020. For realsies.

3. Creating a daily habit before you actually have to deliver on a daily writing practice

While I have been writing semi-regularly on different projects for a few years now-- meeting weekly-ish with Erika to deliberately put pen to paper-- I have never really gotten into the habit of writing daily: in part because of my full life-plate, and in part because writing is often terrible.

So what in the freg was I thinking when I assumed that if I put a prompt in my google calendar every day, that this constituted a 'habit' that I would suddenly pick up on November 1 and execute without fail or mind-numbing effort?

I didn't give myself a fair shot at forming a regular daily practice before I had to face the daily horror of the blank page. So I learned a lot about the power of habit, and I will be experimenting in 2020 with a few different writing schedules to try to find the pacing and rhythm-- and regularity-- that allows me to build off of the 15,000 words I did write as I continue to move towards my goal of completing this book.

4. Carving out enough time to get into the writing headspace

This point is a little bit of a nuance, but I also learned that it is not just about setting aside the time to put words on paper. It is also about setting aside the time needed to be able to get in the flow state to write.  I know, I know. I am starting to sound a touch precious/ridiculous. "If you feel stuck and it is this hard to convince yourself to write Amy, why do you keep trying? Maybe novel writing is not for you."

Maybe it isn't. But I am not ready to abandon the pursuit just yet (especially with 15K words to build off of). Despite finding it surprisingly difficult to make time, create habits and turn off my inner critic, I still REALLY feel like I want to do this (which adds to the angst of the whole endeavour... but I digress), and my little hear sings when I do come off a session with progress made. It feels so good. 

5. Learning by doing

So with all of this said, November was a thrilling month, and I am still so proud to have accomplished what I have with this little NaNoWriMo experiment. Importantly, I have also learned a TON about how I write and what I can do to take my practice forward.

I am a big proponent of education and reading and understanding and preparation-- but I am increasingly convinced of the power of learning by doing. I have written about this before, but it is still incredible to me how much I learn from abandoning fear, throwing myself into the deep end and trying something-- and extra kudos to all of us for an only-partial success, because that heady mix of partial-accomplishment combined with an avalanche of lessons learned is so intoxicatingly inspiring.

So there you go! I failed. And accomplished. And learned. I am super grateful for the experience, and super inspired for the next phase of experimentation and progress. Thank you to everyone who sent little notes of encouragement and support this month, and thank you again to the guest writers for enabling me to have this experience!


But wait! Is all this talk of the pains of creative writing feeling a bit too daunting on a sunny Sunday morning?  Then please enjoy this article with 9 stretches for lower back pain.  

Still too much realness?  Then to bring this dispatch full circle, please watch this video promoting one of the kitchen's most versatile and exciting utensils #spatulacity

From one creativity-loving person to another, I am glad that we can enjoy the start of December together. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have a festive week!

Until next Sunday (or tomorrow for those participating in the digital advent calendar),
The Earnest Platypus