Peace of Mind Organizing

I wrote a novel!

30 November 2009

I finished my novel on Friday, November 27, three days early. I wrote a few hundred words past the 50,000-word goal. And my book had an actual plot that came to a graceful conclusion.

Will I do anything with it? That remains to be seen. I’m not sure I’m interested in putting in the kind of work that it would require in order to make it marketable to a publisher. The point of this exercise was to see if I could do it. And I did it!

It took me about an hour a day, first thing in the morning. A few days I had to get up extra early in order to get my words in before I had to leave for a client. But, mostly, it wasn’t a hardship. Here’s the best part: each day between November 1 and 27, I started the day with an achievement. That’s an excellent way to start the day, believe me!

I think I’m going to designate the first hour of each work day a “power hour.” This month-long-novel-writing exercise has demonstrated that the first hour of the morning is a very productive time of day for me. If each month I work toward a goal during my power hour, I think I’ll achieve a whole lot.

After all, if I can write an entire novel in a month — a novel that was completely unplanned in terms of its plot or characters — I think I can pretty much do anything I put my mind to.

How will you challenge yourself in the new year?

Tagged with: goals, nanowrimo, productivity, time management

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