At the suggestion of someone whose opinion I value, I’m attempting NaNoWriMo this year for the second time.

Oh, jeez.

There’s some trepidation here, I’ll admit. I had given it a go in 2011. The idea of completing a 50,000-word first draft manuscript was quite appealing and made me approach writing in a way I never had before. And you know what? I did finish that script in November.

Of 2016.

Upon analysis of what went wrong, I told myself that the pace of NaNo was a bit too accelerated for the way I usually work. It was a highly pressurized concept. I said to myself I work best in spurts over long periods of time, and that there was no way I could produce something useful in a limited time as a month, as evidenced by the Writer’s Block at around 11,000 words, two weeks in.

Excuses. All of them.

The truth is that I wasn’t prepared to make the lifestyle changes necessary to write. Despite my best intentions, I still treated writing as a hobby, something I did to pass the time when the mood struck me. So what’s different now? What changed my mindset?

The project I started in 2011.

I read it recently for the first time in a few months, and I noticed that so much time had passed between the Day I started and the end of the first draft that it seemed like it was written by two different people. And while my creative side says that most things benefit from added development time and effort, I can’t honestly say that some counter-productive quest for perfection is the reason for the delay. The fact is I have terrible and unprofessional writing habits.

I took some stock of these habits, and I found some of what I need to change.

Deadlines: I need to learn to keep them. It’s hard when you have a regular job and other responsibilities, but that can’t be an excuse for me anymore if I ever want to write full-time. Part of the challenge of 50K in 30 days is that it has to happen. To make that happen, I have to prioritize writing. Which means the next habit I have to change is…

No dedicated writing time: I’d like to think that most writers who have day (or night) jobs struggle with this. I tend to write during gaps at work, or during commutes (on mass transit, of course. Don’t write and drive.), or when I don’t have anything better to do. That should stop. I mean, no it shouldn’t, I should still take advantage of the extra moments in a day or the spare writing time at work, but I should also schedule an hour of strict “Don’t bother me, I’m busy” writing time every day. I mean, I know people who do that for Game of Thrones and Power, I can do it to write. No phone calls, no Facebook, no Twitter, nothing else should happen during writing time.

No dedicated writing space: The lack of a dedicated writing time means that my writing space is mostly decentralized. I write at my workstation, at the library, or at varying coffee shops, but rarely at home and in an area where all I’m doing is writing. And that’s not to say that writing in these non-home spaces are necessarily wrong, but all the extra stimulation from work, caffeine, or other people makes it difficult to focus.

My office is a disaster: I had myself convinced for a very long time that I work best in situations and spaces that seem like organized chaos.

On second thought, however, there is nothing about this disorder that is inviting or productive. My writing space is often a covered in a disparate pile of papers and notes. It’s a mess, and it makes me associate writing with, at the very least, poor feng shui. Thankfully, this is the most natural fix.

These things that I was unwilling or unable to address, these bad habits, I feel that changing them will lead to more consistent writing sessions. At worst, it makes for a grand, month-long experiment. I know I’m probably late to the party on this front, but hey, the party’s still going on.

So to all my creative friends out there: What habits do you have that sabotage your process? Feel free to comment!

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