{"id":615,"date":"2011-12-02T17:57:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T16:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/?p=615"},"modified":"2013-05-10T10:02:20","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T09:02:20","slug":"a-race-well-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/a-race-well-run\/","title":{"rendered":"A race well run"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know you&#8217;re all dying of anticipation. <em>Did she make it? Did she make the 50,000-word NaNoWriMo goal?<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 20px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.liquorlockerla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baileys-Irish-Cream-Liqueur.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"433\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nope. I didn&#8217;t. I maxed out at 45,137. I just couldn&#8217;t pop out another word. My brain circuits shut down. I poured a glass of Bailey&#8217;s and called it a night at 10:30.<\/p>\n<p>I <em>could<\/em> have forced the issue. I could have just typed away, oblivious to the actual content of what I was typing, but as much as I like editing, that didn&#8217;t really seem like the point to me. I felt like the exercise had served its purpose.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It forced me to get started on the project. <em>It won&#8217;t ever happen unless you actually start the writing.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>It forced me to keep moving forward. <em>You can&#8217;t afford to waste valuable time editing already written words when you&#8217;ve got ideas flowing.<\/em> My typical approach is to write, and then obsessively edit, everything. I had to change that.<\/li>\n<li>It forced me to take the project seriously. <em>I&#8217;m not going to spend that kind of time and effort on something that never goes anywhere. I&#8217;m going to see this thing through!<\/em><\/li>\n<li>It forced me to get organized; <em>I have to keep all those words easily accessible in case I need to go back and check something.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>It forced me to pay attention to setting aside time every day for my own writing, no matter how heavy my workload of remunerative translating and editing was. <em>It&#8217;s only going to go forward if you spend time on it.<\/em> Those words piling up (or not) are vivid proof of that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><\/em>I&#8217;d say that in terms of the novel, I&#8217;m about halfway done. I&#8217;m really starting to get to know some of these characters. I had to change the plot because I couldn&#8217;t imagine my Swiss post-doc being evil at heart. I like him too much. I&#8217;m hooked.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to take a couple of days off, and then get back to work. Next week I have some interviews set up with people to get a handle on some of the scientific and technical details.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll also be able to get back to the blog, and some gripping stuff I want to write about cognitive biases (I did <a title=\"Keyframing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/keyframing\/\" target=\"_blank\">slip one in<\/a> just a couple of days ago, in case you didn&#8217;t catch it) and mice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know you&#8217;re all dying of anticipation. Did she make it? Did she make the 50,000-word NaNoWriMo goal? Nope. I didn&#8217;t. I maxed out at 45,137. I just couldn&#8217;t pop out another word. My brain circuits shut down. I poured &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/a-race-well-run\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[9],"tags":[78],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1R58n-9V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":622,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}