BoNoProMo, Update Zero: Tomorrow It Begins

So, tomorrow comes the merry month of May, and that means the beginning of BoNoProMo. (Confused already? Click here, or, for the real thing, there.) The rules, Lisa Borders says, are supposedly simple: “that you schedule a minimum of ten hours of writing time a week; that you stick to that schedule unless it’s truly impossible; and that, if you don’t get your work done, you analyze what went wrong and do your best to create a more workable schedule the following week.”

But let's go ahead and complicate things, breaking them down a little before building them back up.

May has thirty-one days. No wimpy February-without-a-leap-day-exactly-four-week-month to work with here, so there's Complication One. And since a number of BoNoProMo participants have decided to stay away from Facebook for the duration, meaning there's no easy place to post my schedule and then the success, failure, and analysis of what I did right or wrong when I did/didn't meet that schedule. Complication Two.

(Side note: Easiest part of the whole thing for me? Analysis of failure. Practice, y'know.)

And then there's Complication Three. Actually doing the writing.

Still, with the exception of Complication Three, it's all manageable. This blog right here will be where I'll be posting my schedule and updating the week's results. (Guest writer updates welcome, Lisa Korzeniowski.) The thirty-one day thing? Break it down, and the goal is 1.43 hours a day, or 44.29 hours for the month. (Note to self. Investigate the feasibility of scheduling a two-day, no sleeping, writer's retreat, at the end of May.)

So, let's play. Part one is the schedule.

Schedule for Week 1. (Which is May 1- 7 for me, unlike people taking off that weekend for the Muse and the Marketplace conference. Me, I hope to come home from the Muse and, in a fit of inspiration, scrawl out a few words before falling asleep exhausted and, quite possibly, drunk.)

All writing to be done in the evening unless otherwise noted, although I may try some daytime writing on the weekends after the Muse.

May 1 - 1.0 hours. I hope one and a half hours will be my typical writing day, although I may end up having to ease into it with a smaller number at first. Hard to take the old jalopy from zero to sixty, I know, but I'd like to try and push it. Preferably downhill.
May 2 (Friday, first day of the Muse) - 1.5 hours.
May 3 (Saturday, second day of the Muse and a get-together night for the members of my writer's group) - 0 hours.
May 4 (Sunday, final day of the Muse) - 2.0 hours.
May 5 (Monday, day after the Muse and time that I'm taking off from work to decompress and recharge, introvert that I am, as well as to write) - 3.0 hours.
May 6 (Back to work) - 1.0 hours.
May 7 (A week from today, and what should be time for update blog one, the first week's recap. Note that in my BoNoProMo, blog writing time definitely counts.) 1.5 hours.

Which if my math is right, brings me to a total of ten hours, and which, with the schedule complete, also brings me to Part Two (a.k.a. Complication Three, for those of you paying attention). The writing.

It all comes back to the writing, doesn't it?

And that's the part that scares me.

Happy BoNoProMo-ing, and thanks for reading.

Stephen

Still Pain, Some Playing, and What the Heck is a BoNoProMo?

Well, it's been a month and a half since my last blog post, and we are clearly into the postherpetic neuralgia stage, which is to say, my silly nerves think that I still have shingles, and they don't hold anything back in letting me know that. All day, every day. And despite my brave posturing back in March, I have to admit I haven't been doing all that much writing, or that much exercising, either. However, 'not all that much' is indeed better than nothing. All is not lost.

My exercising is usually running, except when New England's Spring imitates Winter, sending the wimp that I am inside to find a free elliptical. It took me a while to get back into the habit, but now I'm scheduling myself for an exercise session every two to three days, and for the past week that's a schedule that I've been able to stick to.

The writing is harder. (For me, it always is, as I'll use exercising as an excuse to not write.) There has been some rewriting, which definitely counts, of a longish piece for taking to my writer's group, of another piece now in the very last stages of final polishing before submission, and, most recently, the tightening up of a flash piece for an audio submission to the Drum. (The Drum has open author recordings/ submissions at the Muse and the Marketplace conference, which I will once again be attending next weekend. This year's Muse is the culmination of Grub Street's Lit Week 2014.) But aside from a couple of aborted first pages, and an idea or two jotted down on a subway trip, I've written nothing completely new in quite some time. And I've gotten completely out of the habit of daily writing.

That, my friends, is something I'd like to try and change. Luckily, I won't be doing it alone.

In her Grub Street blog, the wonderful writer and teacher Lisa Borders has proposed a month-long challenge for writers with day jobs, writers who want and need to create a schedule that works with their lives, but who need that extra push to actively put writing front and center in every day.

She's given this challenge, declared for the month of May, the rather ungainly name of BoNoProMo, for Boston Novel in Progress Month -- but writers not in Boston can participate, and in my case, rather than work on the rump of a novel I started back in November, I intend to be working on creating a few new short stories (as well as polishing up and sending out some pre-existing works). Call my version BoShoStoProMo, or better yet, don't.

Here's the challenge. Ten hours of writing a week. I'll confess, that scares me. Even when I WAS writing daily, it was 30-60 minutes a day, not 85.71 minutes a day (and yes, I've done the math).

Thirty-one days in May. The countdown from 310 hours begins on Thursday.

Anyone else want to play?

Thanks for reading,

Stephen