EPISODE 23: ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, WRITE! NANOWRIMO AND BEYOND
Get set for a writing sprint with this motivating episode! Join writing coaches Sharon and Christy as they share tips to optimize writing sprints like NaNoWriMo.
Whether you’re gearing up for a 30-day creative marathon or simply trying to make steady progress on your WIP, you’ll gather insightful advice on planning, accountability, tracking achievements, celebrating small successes, and keeping perspective along the way.
Sharon and Christy draw from their personal experiences with writing challenges to provide an encouraging mix of practical strategies, managing expectations, and giving grace when life happens. You’ll walk away inspired to start moving the needle on your writing goals.
Key Topics Include:
- Crafting reasonable daily word count objectives
- Leveraging accountability partners and writing communities
- Using outlines and placeholder notes to boost efficiency
- Tracking progress thoughtfully with data
- Rewards and reflections for mini-milestones
- Avoiding comparison and discouragement traps
- Planning for inevitable disruptions
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @CoachingKidLit
For more information about Sharon Skinner, visit bookcoachingbysharon.com or follow her on Instagram @sharon_skinner_author_bookcoach and Twitter @SharonSkinner56.
For more information about Christy Yaros, visit christyyaros.com or follow her on Instagram and Twitter@ChristyYaros.
EPISODE URL: https://coachingkidlit.podbean.com/e/episode-23-on-your-mark-get-set-write-nanowrimo-and-beyond/?token=fa35a4dc2ef2e2883ad404cd9c628263
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Coaching KidLit Transcript – EPISODE 23: On Your Mark, Get Set, Write! NaNoWriMo and Beyond
Sharon Skinner: Hey, Christy.
Christy Yaros: Hey Sharon.
Sharon Skinner: So what are we gonna talk about today?
Christy Yaros: Oh, let’s talk about people who are participating in… writing sprints for the month. Something like NaNoWriMo or anything where you’re trying to write a large amount in a short amount of time.
Sharon Skinner: I think that’s a great idea. I think it’s good timing because there are a lot of people who participate in, at least in NaNoWriMo, and I think that this would be a great time to talk about, first of all, that we’re cheering them on. We are excited for anybody participating in that kind of a writing sprint. And there are some ways that you can make it so it’s not too onerous on yourself. And, Get to where you want to be or at least make progress and feel good about it.
Christy Yaros: Yeah, definitely. Have you ever done NaNo?
Sharon Skinner: I personally am not a NaNo person. I’m a novel in 90 kind of person. I need a little more time to stretch my writing out. I’ve done novel in 90 and been quite successful at it. But I think something where I had to write 50,000 words in a month might break me. I am not that writer. that’s not who I am, but I think it’s really great when people do it or at least set a goal to do it. I will say that if you’re more like me, there’s no reason why you can’t participate, but just adjust your goal. You don’t have to be competitive about it. You don’t have to hit that 50,000 words. You could maybe set a goal of 25, 000 words for yourself for that month. And that would be cool. whatever works for you, but to feel like you’re part of that community is really a great way to get your butt in your chair and do the writing.
How about you?
Christy Yaros: 20 years ago, in 2003, I did do it with, some coworkers and I finished and it was crazy. And then even in 2004, I took over as a municipal liaison because of course I did when I was in New York for Nassau and Suffolk County on Long Island. And so that was my first real writing community, I think outside of college or anything like that before my SCBWI days, before grad school and all of that. there’s something to be said for having a community in general. Obviously, we always advocate for having a writing community, but having a community that has the same goals at the same time, where everybody’s striving for something similar, it can be very rewarding and can help you with your motivation.
And if you like competition.
Sharon Skinner: But it’s like the world’s largest writing group almost, right? Even though people aren’t really sharing and critiquing, it’s a huge number of people who get into this and get into the swing of it. And there are all sorts of. support mechanisms for it. I know, I’ve been asked in the past for the JuNoWriMo group, I was asked to do a little post to cheer them on one year.
And it’s nice to have that encouragement along the way when you’re doing this because, writing can feel like a total solo endeavor, right?
Christy Yaros: Yeah. And especially if you don’t normally have a community, this is a great place to build one, but it can also be very dangerous. If, like you said, if you know you’re not the kind of person who can do this, then I think you have to be a little bit careful about what kind of expectations you make of yourself.
In the U.S., November is a hard month when you have Thanksgiving right there at the end, and you need to make that final push.
Sharon Skinner: Well, I think the reason that JuNoWriMo came into being is because November is a very hard month for people here in my part of the country to participate in something like this because it’s finally the weather breaks and we can go outside again. And in some parts of the country, it’s. It’s cold and it’s starting to snow, and you want to snuggle up inside and all of that, but we’re here…we’re all like, Oh my gosh, I can go outside again and not be burnt to a crisp as soon as I exit my door. So I believe that is why JuNoWriMo came into being so that people had an option in the other part of the year that for us is the time when we’re like, okay, we’re just going to stay inside and we’re going to sit in front of a fan and drink iced tea.
Christy Yaros: Yeah, and then the camps that go in April and over the summer, too. And a lot of people have been very successful with it, I mean, it proves that it is possible. I would say, when I first did it, I had zero plan and I just sat down and started writing and I have since learned that for me that is not necessarily a good idea and so I would encourage personally anybody to at least come up with something because I’ll tell you maybe you can write 50,000 words in November but when December comes and you have to revise those 50,000 words That could be a little tough.
The good thing about KidLit, the first one I did was an adult book, and so 50,000 got me psh, like, not very far into my story, which should have just been an indication that it was already a nightmare. But for us now, especially with the trends, 50,000 words is a, more than enough for a middle, most middle grades and a pretty solid start for a draft of a YA.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, that’s true. And I think that there are a lot of people who are very successful at it. I know people who swear by the writing sprints, either Juno or NaNoWriMo type writing sprints where you get a month. And I know a very successful author who writes big chunks of her books in during that time.
So there’s a lot to be said for it to have a container for the amount of work that you plan to do and the timeline for when you’re going to do it.
Christy Yaros: Yeah. And I think. The more you can prep, and I like that there’s, prep time built in with October now more than there, there used to be when Nano first started, but having that plan in general, right? For any time you’re writing, not even just for a sprint in a month, but having that plan so that when you sit down, you can spend that time actually writing is, I think, one of the most important things that people can do.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah. I think that there are a lot of pluses to having that. opportunity to write out. I think a plan works for most people. Again, you know me, process is personal. Everybody’s a little different. Some people just want to sit down and just write 50,000 words and that’s okay. But like you said, then you still have to revise it.
You’ve got your lump of clay, but you still got to revise it. And. I think that, for me though, it’s just, it’s too stressful. I feel like I’m, I feel like if I don’t do this, it’s something terrible is going to happen. because I grew up with four brothers, I think I’m very competitive. And the whole idea of that, you need to meet that 50,000 words.
I think it just weighs on me. It just stresses me out. But I think it’s great for a lot of people. And I know a lot of people who have successfully done it, but I know that the people who I talked to, do it and get something really valuable out of it. Like you said, they tend to do some kind of pre planning.
Christy Yaros: And that could be so many different things, it could be just getting to know your character so that you have an idea of what you’re going to do. It could be making a plot, a short plot points, or it could be outlining your whole thing, it could be world building, so that you kind of know where you’re going when you’re in there, but That’s it.
Sharon Skinner: Could be a spreadsheet…
Christy Yaros: Yeah, there’s a spreadsheet. There is, I did, I will say even 20 years ago, I had a spreadsheet that would track how many words I’d written and how many words I had to do, which you want to talk about stressful Sharon, a spreadsheet that you would log your words every day, and it would tell you how many words at this pace you had to do for the remaining days.
So when you fall behind, and it’s like, don’t worry, if you write 10,000 words today, and every day for the next five days, you can catch up.
Sharon Skinner: You could catch up. Yeah.
Christy Yaros: And at that time, I had a toddler. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I guess I wasn’t cooking for Thanksgiving because clearly that was never going to happen. But that weekend, I probably wrote 30 to 35,000 of those 50,000 words on those last two or three days.
Sharon Skinner: that’s another thing, if you’re going to do this, jump in and… and do it and, be consistent, sit down every day and work on it because otherwise it will pile up on you. And then for somebody like me, it just makes the pressure worse. It’s like, Oh my God, I’m never going to finish this now.
So yeah. And then you have to write 35,000 words in a weekend.
Christy Yaros: Yeah. Tiring on the fingers for sure.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah. So there are a lot of different ways to prep too. Like you said, you could use a the blueprint method. You can use the save the cat method. You can look at Rachel Aaron’s 2,000 to 10,000, how she plans ahead. You can, like you said, just get to know your characters. So you kind of have an idea where they’re going and or what you want them to do and then try and follow them around a little bit.
Like I used to always do pretending I was just a journalist and I followed my characters around and wrote down everything they did, which was fine to a point. But I did always find that I then had to figure out, the ultimate goal, which I didn’t always know when I was writing my way in.
But there’s nothing wrong with using part of this time to write your way in, to figure out who your characters are and what your story is either. And Honestly, you can use this time to world build. You can use this time to create character sketches. every single word counts. It doesn’t have to be a novel when you’re done.
It could be all the prep work.
Christy Yaros: Well, I would think no matter what you do, it’s still a draft of some kind, because there’s always going to be revision necessary. No matter how much you plan, no matter how diligent you are every day, writing is revision.
Sharon Skinner: I think, to be honest with you, there was one time that I decided I was going to edit my novel in that time period while everybody else was writing. And that’s what I did. As I revised the novel, I didn’t write an entire novel. So there are a lot of ways to approach it, but I think the important thing is to not be discouraged no matter what’s going on and whether or not you do get to sit down every single day and write, or if you feel like you’re getting behind, I think it’s important not to get discouraged because Any progress you make is progress. I was talking to a client the other day and she didn’t feel like she was making progress.
Christy Yaros: She was like sitting at her computer for a set time every day. And so I asked her to start tracking the actual word count rather than the amount of time that she was spending. And it made all the difference because she was writing anywhere from 900 to 1,500, 1,600 words a day easily. And that’s progress. I don’t know what you have to write to do, what’s the amount you have to write to get to the 50,000? 1,667.
Sharon Skinner: Okay. How long does that take you if you know what you’re going to write? One of the things that I also told her, because sometimes she said she sits down and stares at the page first thing, I don’t know if it was Hemingway or somebody who said that they always leave the work, knowing where it was going next or where they were going to go next.
They always tried to leave it on a place rather than finish a chapter or a scene completely. They always knew what was gonna happen next and had that first line ready to go sitting there so that when they came back they could just go, yep, now I’m gonna go write this. And I think that’s a technique that helped me a lot in my writing.
Because I was always like, I got to finish this part and I got to finish this part. And then the next day I’d be like, so now what are we doing? And it, it did waste time. So I do like that technique of leaving yourself knowing where you’re headed next.
Christy Yaros: I opened up an old draft of something that I did work on during a NaNo and that I did not finish, but there was a scene that stopped in the middle of a sentence and I don’t know who that Christy thought was going to remember what the rest of that sentence was. My brain definitely does not work that way.
I would need maybe like a kind of a list, like Okay, this is what you were going to do for the rest of the scene. Now actually write it. But like, what
Sharon Skinner: yeah, no, I’m not talking about, yeah, I’m not talking about stopping in the middle of a sentence, at least with a note saying, and The next thing she said or did would be this, so that you know where you’re going.
But yeah, I don’t, I have no idea what I would do if I found half a sentence.
Christy Yaros: I would just love to remember what it was that like, that could not have been on purpose.
Sharon Skinner: No, I’m guessing that was a toddler issue.
Christy Yaros: yeah, or something didn’t save maybe I actually finished it and it just didn’t save and it’s gone into the ether. But yeah, I think no matter how much you’re trying to get done in amount of time and even if you’re not sprinting through the month, knowing what you’re going to do next, there’s so much of your brain power that you can waste by trying to figure out what you’re going to do instead of actually doing it.
That having, for whatever that means to you, having set yourself up enough so that the next time you sit down, you have a plan. That means something different to everybody.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, there are probably people out there who can write that half sentence and know the next time they sit down where they were going with that and finish it, finish that thought. I’m not one of them.
Christy Yaros: Maybe.
Sharon Skinner: I bet there are.
Christy Yaros: Maybe a hundred years ago when there was no social media and everything else that would distract you between when you stopped writing and when you started writing again, but certainly that’s a little bit rough these days.
I, I like to think that, but I imagine that there was, the Iceman, yelling in the street or something that would stop you in the middle of whatever you were doing too. There’s always the things, right? We’re human. We’re easily distracted, For sure.
Christy Yaros: So to your point if your goal is to write every single day for that sprint, and Especially if you’re doing nano and it’s sixteen hundred and sixty seven words. Like you’re right. Do you even know how long it takes you typically to write how many of us keep track of that to where we can say that this is even a reasonable goal considering the amount of time in a day, like, are you setting yourself up for failure from before you even start by saying, Sure, I can write seventeen hundred words, when the most you’ve ever done is, you know, four hundred words in an hour? Do you have four hours to sit and write?
Sharon Skinner: That’s a great question, and I must confess, as much as I hate spreadsheets, I, when I was doing the Novel in 90, I did track both my word count and the amount of time it took me to write those words. And on a really, on a good day, I could do 750 words in just under an hour. And, that was nice, but on a rough day, it would take me an hour and a half or so to do. So it could vary depending on, again, if I knew where I was going and, if I was in the flow of just the writing.
Christy Yaros: I’m not saying I don’t and I advocate like to my clients, definitely to keep track of that, because we’re not going to remember. And we’re also, I think we tend to remember the things that we did poorly and not necessarily the things that we did well, and I think when you track something over a long period of time, you notice patterns that you probably forgot, that maybe, yeah, maybe you had a couple of days that it took you over an hour or two hours to get to that thousand words, but you probably had just as many days that you did it faster and your average was somewhere in between, but you probably remember more the days that it sucked than the days that you did really, or the days that you did really well, but not the average out over that time.
One of the things that I recommend to my clients, I’m sure you do too when you’re drafting, like don’t get stuck on things that you don’t know the answer to yet. It is great to put something in brackets and leave it for later. Names…I don’t know about you, names for me is such a huge time suck because I like that name to be perfect.
I’m going down that rabbit hole. No, not when I’m drafting, it’s come up with a name for this person later. Research about this thing later. Insert this scene later because I don’t know what to do with it and come back to it. And that’s, I think, a good way to keep yourself moving and keep your word count per hour up.
Sharon Skinner: I’m a firm believer in placeholders. Now my personal placeholder is a triple question mark, because I don’t know and other people use other things, but I use a triple question mark and then I’ll usually make a note like of what I need. And I write fantasy. So it’s usually things like how far can a horse travel in a day fully loaded with a person on their back. How far can a person walk uphill in a day over rough terrain, feasibly, if they’re full, if they’re healthy? and what if they’re not? and what kind of plants grow at this elevation? I have no idea. I don’t remember what color my character’s eyes were when we saw them last, and so I’m gonna just put his… Blank eyes sparkled in the sunlight. I don’t use triple question mark eyes. So yeah, I’m a firm believer in placeholders rather than stopping the work or stopping the flow in order to figure something out like that. I just think that’s the best way to go for it. Otherwise, you never get anything done.
You’ll just end up researching or looking stuff up all day long and you get no writing done.
Christy Yaros: Regardless of whether you’re trying to sprint or not, your writing time is valuable writing time. And that is, that’s a different part of your brain. That’s a different thought process. You’re taking yourself out of the creative space and putting yourself into the analytical or the research. space, and it can mess it up.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah. And if you use the same symbol, whatever it is, brackets, question marks, TK to be known, whatever it is you use for that placeholder, you can do a word search on that. And on a day when you’re not writing and start filling in those blanks and looking that stuff up when you’re in that mode.
Like you said, it’s a different part of the brain and it’s a great way to, okay, today I’m not in the flow. That’s another thing. Like if I’m writing and it’s just not coming, those are the days where I might think, maybe today’s a day for me to go do that rather than try to do the creative writing and get the words on the page.
Christy Yaros: Yeah, and that’s a great way to keep yourself moving. I tell my clients, I have two now that are working through very first draft after we just planned. I love when we can get writers right at the beginning of that process and plan all of the stuff for them, what they need. But as they’re going through,
we give you permission, listeners, to put brackets and to not figure out every single thing as you’re writing, and then at the end of the writing session, you have a separate notepad where you write, these are the things that I need to figure out still, and let your subconscious work on it another time.
These are the things that I need to research, and when you have 10 minutes while dinner is cooking or you’re waiting for your kid to finish soccer practice, you pull out your phone and you Google that thing that you’re trying to figure out and where you can fit stuff into little pockets of time.
But for a long time, I wasted a lot of time trying to figure everything out before it went on the page and it just doesn’t serve anybody. But to waste all that time when it might not even end up in your story, this might not even be important. It feels important in this moment. In the grand scheme, there might not even be a horse in your story and now you’ve wasted how much time figuring out, how much hay they need for nothing.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah. You may change that. That may change and in revision too. and not, if you don’t know what the name of the street was or whatever it is that you need to know, you might remember it later while you’re cooking dinner without even having to look it up. why waste brain power and energy and time on something that can Either be easily looked up or might come to you in a moment of clarity.
Christy Yaros: And then also, depending on what kind of writer you are, as we’ve discussed before. I’m a short writer. I’m not putting a lot of details in my first draft. That’s just not the way that I write. So, it is a little harder for me to get to 50,000 words in a month because my first draft probably isn’t even close to that.
But it’s knowing what you’re comfortable with putting on the page for whatever you define as this draft and allowing yourself to not worry about those other things. If dialogue is not your thing, don’t worry about the dialogue. Just put like a placeholder that says, have a conversation about whatever and keep going.
If like me, description is not your thing. you’re going to come back later and figure that out.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, I’ve totally done exactly that with things like dialogue. Okay. They need to have an argument about this moving on or how do I get so and so back in the room? cause sometimes I don’t know.
Christy Yaros: So even though that first year I did my 50,000 words, the next year did not go as well, and the year after that didn’t go as well. And, I did get discouraged from thinking, how come I could do this the first year and I can’t do this again? My world was different. I had moved states in between. I was living in a new place. I had a different job. how do you suggest your writers keep from getting discouraged when they can’t maybe make a goal like this?
Sharon Skinner: I always encourage my writers to think about progress. You’re making forward progress. No matter how much you write in a day, if it’s 10 words or 10,000, you’ve made forward progress. And I like them to celebrate that. did you sit down and write today? Or did you at least come up with a plan to write?
Did you sketch out a character today? Did you make progress on the thing that you want to accomplish? Then count that as progress. Celebrate that progress.
You are building your lump of clay and it may only be a thousand words at a time or 500 words at a time, or it may just be that you are starting to see the shape of it, but you’re making progress. And so, you should celebrate that. And celebrate yourself for sitting down and doing it.
Christy Yaros: We’re so bad at that, right? We set out to write a novel, to get novel published, which is such a huge, nebulous thing and can take so many years with, doing everything right and having the best luck. so much is out of your control that celebrating that progress that you do make is so important.
And it can’t be, I will only celebrate when I finish this draft. that’s too long. That’s too much.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, I recently had a client who, started querying, she wasn’t getting much traction, she came to me for help with her synopsis and her query letter, and when all was said and done, we celebrated that she had a much better synopsis and a much stronger query letter. Her spark was reignited to go back out and start querying this thing and to move forward again. It’s easy to get discouraged in this kind of a creative endeavor because we see all these books being published around us and we’re struggling to get there.
And even I have nine novels out and right now I’m struggling to get the next one out and people are around me just like, Ooh, I have a new novel out. I have a new book out. I have a new novel out. It can be, you have to stop comparing yourself. And that’s another one of the reasons why for me, Nano is dangerous is because I have trouble not comparing my progress and my success to others. I have to remind myself on a regular basis that this is about me, and this is about my journey.
It’s not about anybody else. it’s not a race. It’s a journey.
Christy Yaros: And a very personal one, because maybe I can spit out 50,000 words, and they’re nonsense. And maybe you can only spit out 10,000 words, but they’re so much more organized, and your story makes more sense. Who’s really better off at the end of the day, I guess? That also depends. If I’m great at revision, maybe I can turn that into something.
If not, now I just have 50,000 words of nonsense that I have to figure out.
Sharon Skinner: It’s just about making progress. And if you want to win the badge and you can do this and you can churn out the 50,000 and that’s your goal. And that’s glorious. I think celebrate that. But if along the way you find this process is not for you to churn out 50,000, then set yourself a realistic goal.
And still you can be part of the community that’s doing this and not have to feel like a failure or that you didn’t, win some badge or something, just because you didn’t hit the 50,000 words. I don’t think that the people who set up Nano and who continue to participate in it all the time, are trying to set anybody up to feel bad about themselves or fail or anything.
And they just want to give you a space to write into. I think that’s the whole idea behind it. And 50,000 is a great goal for a month. If you’re doing sprint writing, That’s also, totally valid. But again, if you are not the person that’s able to do that, then do what you’re able to do what works for you.
And still participate, be part of the community, celebrate the other people who are totally capable of doing this. I think it’s a fabulous opportunity for a lot of people.
I cheer on all of the people who take this on, whether you, win, lose or draw, if you want to call it a race, if you get your badge, if you don’t get your badge, as long as you make progress, I really, I want to celebrate you for giving yourself some goals in your writing and sitting down and making the effort to accomplish them and making progress along the way.
Christy Yaros: How many people say I want to write a book, but don’t ever actually sit down and do any of it. So, any progress towards that and however you approach it, I know now that the mistake that I made then was that I was just trying to reach 50,000 words without any kind of concept of what that meant once I got there.
So maybe for some people, the 50,000 words, your goal is to write x percent of the book. Like I’m just going to write and until I get to 50,000 and that’s… 50 percent of my book 60 percent and you’ll write the rest afterwards.
Or maybe it’s I’m going to tell my whole story in 50,000 words and then I’m going to expand it later. There’s so many different ways to approach it, but anything is better than coming out on the other end with nothing.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great opportunity to make progress on your work in progress. It’s a great opportunity to set yourself some goals and sit down and write forward. And I applaud anyone and everyone who is willing and able to do that.
Christy Yaros: Absolutely. And there was a study done pre pandemic, I’m sure it’s much different now, but a study that was done by the American Society of Training and Development where like, how likely you are to attain a goal based on the actions that you take. And they say just having an idea or a goalyou’re 10% likely to attain that.
Consciously deciding to do it increases you to 25%. Deciding when you’ll do it increases you to 40%. Planning how to do it, 50%. Committing to someone that you will do it 65% and checking in with someone that you’ve committed to 95% and NaNo itself gives you all of those things. And if that’s not something that you have on your own, maybe you won’t hit 50,000 because there might be things out of your control regardless of how well you plan and how much you check in and how much you sit down and whatever.
But saying, Hey, everybody, strangers or not, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to do this. And I’m going to check in every day with myself and with you and say how much I’ve gotten done. And by the end of the month, this is what I’m planning to have. You’re miles ahead of the person who just says, someday, I’m going to write a book.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the accountability piece to it is huge. I have clients who work with me simply because they need the accountability to keep moving forward. And I also know that when I am doing novel in 90, I don’t do that on my own. That’s a group of individuals I do that with, and we check in with each other, and we tell each other how many words we wrote that day during that sprint.
The accountability is a great component of this, and as you say, having that for a lot of us, is, It’s really important, rather than just, oh, I’m telling myself I’m gonna do it, and then if I don’t, eh, I just didn’t bother, I didn’t feel like it, but now you’re like, oh, I gotta let people know how many words I wrote yesterday.
And I don’t really want to take a goose egg.
But then also being kind to yourself if you do have to, and recognizing that your effort is still worth something, even if you can’t get there. You don’t know other people’s situations, what they have going on in their life. Maybe that’s the only thing that they’re doing. Yeah. Life happens, just does…
Christy Yaros: …especially when you make plans.
Sharon Skinner: Every time, every time. Yeah.
Christy Yaros: So, I think that my action item for our listeners is to give yourself some grace during this time when you are setting. All these big goals, whenever you’re setting a big sprint goal or a writing goal also give yourself some grace and some space to be kind to yourself and allow yourself to be human and understand that life happens and we don’t have to be perfect and we don’t all have to finish across the finish line with everybody else. But it is a great way to have accountability. I like that. Hmm. My action item. I would say whether you’re participating or not to track what you’re doing. I have my clients check in depending on what stage they’re at and how their preference is, how much time they’ve spent, how many words they’ve written, how many words they’ve edited, their mood, how they feel about what they got done, and a note about what they got done.
And if you’re doing that right now, you’re probably keeping track of how many words you write every day. Try to keep track of how much time. The more data you have, the better you can plan for the next time you want to do something like this, that you can see, yes, this is possible, or no, this is crazy, and I’m just setting myself up for failure.
I think the more data you have about what you’re able to do, and I think you’ll surprise yourself when you do look at what you’ve accomplished.
Sharon Skinner: Yeah, that’s great.
I always enjoy our talks. I appreciate anybody who takes the time to listen to us and who showed up and hoorah for you if, and when, whenever you’re doing any kind of a writing sprint or making progress towards your writing goals.
And thanks for listening.
Christy Yaros: I agree. Kudos to all of you out there putting yourself in this race and getting however far you get, and good luck to you, and we will see you next month.
Bye.
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For more information about Sharon Skinner, visit bookcoachingbysharon.com or follow her on Instagram @sharon_skinner_author_bookcoach and Twitter @SharonSkinner56.
For more information about Christy Yaros, visit christyyaros.com or follow her on Instagram and Twitter @ChristyYaros.
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