Maybe not 50K words of literally anything kimberlyhirsh.com

@KimberlyHirsh Yeah, it is a huge amount of words to try to write, especially if you're trying to produce stuff with any degree of quality. And especially if you have to juggle other life commitments, and can't just clear your calendar for novel-writing! And yet, having also tried Camp NaNo a couple of times, there's something about the energy of November NaNo season that really helps me get my butt into gear 🫤 It's not a sustainable routine, though.

@jayeless Yeah, the number of people doing it all at the same time is awesome. I just haven't found a good way to make it work for my life.

@KimberlyHirsh as I'm doing NaNo this year, the whole structure of the "one month 50k words" is bugging me more than in the past because it's so inaccessible to so many people, and oriented towards an outcome that is not that useful for many (and sometimes counterproductive by encouraging people to write junk to meet word count when they'd be better served by outlining, brainstorming, or even resting). I'm noodling on a concept for an alternative way to build a sustainable writing habit that's less metric oriented and gamified. It would miss the community energy, but relying on that energy makes it even harder to write at other times of year.

@tracydurnell Yeah. I've been thinking of something like... A novel writing year, a way to give yourself credit for all kinds of activities that aren't churning out words. I think the year I won, I just didn't use contractions, and what a false inflation of word count that was. (Plus I won but never finished the book and haven't looked at it in the 11 years since I wrote it.)