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Exercise and the NanoNovel, redux
Nov. 8th, 2007 06:46 pmNaNoWriMo is kicking my ass.
It's going ... weirdly, in fact. In some ways, I'm doing better than I'd expected to. Actually, if I view it just right, I'm on schedule.
See, the general schedule is viewed as "50000 words in 30 days = 1667 per day". But I never intended to start writing on the first day. My plan was "day or two spent on outline, then start writing". If I claim that that Thursday and Friday were my outline days, then I'm supposed to do 1785 words per day. So by 11/7 I should've been at 8925, and I was at 8900 as of last night. So: just about on schedule.
However, this tidy reasoning ignores two key things:
A) I started writing on 11/2
B) I've been averaging 1250 words on the weekdays.
While the weekend was a little better, and while I do have two holidays this month, beating the benchmark by 200 on my days off will not make up for missing it by 500 on the days I work, no matter how slice it. I don't know much I've done so far today, but I doubt it's more than 500 words. (Most of today's admitedly substantial entry was written yesterday and the day before.)
In related badness, I'm getting further off outline and the front end of the book is definitely bloating. I'm almost 20% through the Nano quota and I don't think I'm even 10% through the story yet. Several major characters haven't even been introduced.
Trying not to let this get me down, and as you can see from the tenor of this entry, not really succeeding.
In other news, the exercise bike is still working out well for me. Of those 8900 word, probably a thousand or so were written while peddling madly away. It's hard to maintain speed while writing. I have the machine set to the middle of its resistance range, and I can sustain 15-16 mph* if I'm paying attention, but when I stop watching (to, say, write or something) I tend to drop to 12 mph or so. There's a technological solution to this -- the bike can be programmed with your intended workout and told to sound an alarm iif you drop below it. But that would require reading the directions. Which would probably take less time than writing out this complaint did, but nonetheless, I've not done it yet.
Even so, I've done an hour plus on the bike each day for the last three, and the odometer was at 45 miles before I got on the bike 15 minutes ago, so hey, sounds pretty good to me. I've even used the fact that I have to go to the basement to use the bike anyway as an excuse to do some weights while I'm there. Yesterday I did a few upper back and chest exercises, and today I did some core ones. Not much, but the exercise that you do is better than the exercise you don't do. Sometimes I think that this workout is harder on my rear than my legs or heart, though. The seat's pretty comfy, but it still involves quite a bit of heavy duty sitting.
Well, I've got another half-hour of biking to do, and can't think of anything else to whine about in my LJ, so guess I'll post this and see if I can figure out what to write next in the NanoNovel.
Okay, yeah, I do know what to write next. Just need to motivate myself to write it.
*
Got a little writing done. Scene hasn't gelled for me yet. It'll come. Did another 14 miles in an hour on the bike. Whew.
* No, I have no idea how this would translate into real world biking terms. I'm pretty sure the speeds are still inflated even at the mid-range resistance, though.
It's going ... weirdly, in fact. In some ways, I'm doing better than I'd expected to. Actually, if I view it just right, I'm on schedule.
See, the general schedule is viewed as "50000 words in 30 days = 1667 per day". But I never intended to start writing on the first day. My plan was "day or two spent on outline, then start writing". If I claim that that Thursday and Friday were my outline days, then I'm supposed to do 1785 words per day. So by 11/7 I should've been at 8925, and I was at 8900 as of last night. So: just about on schedule.
However, this tidy reasoning ignores two key things:
A) I started writing on 11/2
B) I've been averaging 1250 words on the weekdays.
While the weekend was a little better, and while I do have two holidays this month, beating the benchmark by 200 on my days off will not make up for missing it by 500 on the days I work, no matter how slice it. I don't know much I've done so far today, but I doubt it's more than 500 words. (Most of today's admitedly substantial entry was written yesterday and the day before.)
In related badness, I'm getting further off outline and the front end of the book is definitely bloating. I'm almost 20% through the Nano quota and I don't think I'm even 10% through the story yet. Several major characters haven't even been introduced.
Trying not to let this get me down, and as you can see from the tenor of this entry, not really succeeding.
In other news, the exercise bike is still working out well for me. Of those 8900 word, probably a thousand or so were written while peddling madly away. It's hard to maintain speed while writing. I have the machine set to the middle of its resistance range, and I can sustain 15-16 mph* if I'm paying attention, but when I stop watching (to, say, write or something) I tend to drop to 12 mph or so. There's a technological solution to this -- the bike can be programmed with your intended workout and told to sound an alarm iif you drop below it. But that would require reading the directions. Which would probably take less time than writing out this complaint did, but nonetheless, I've not done it yet.
Even so, I've done an hour plus on the bike each day for the last three, and the odometer was at 45 miles before I got on the bike 15 minutes ago, so hey, sounds pretty good to me. I've even used the fact that I have to go to the basement to use the bike anyway as an excuse to do some weights while I'm there. Yesterday I did a few upper back and chest exercises, and today I did some core ones. Not much, but the exercise that you do is better than the exercise you don't do. Sometimes I think that this workout is harder on my rear than my legs or heart, though. The seat's pretty comfy, but it still involves quite a bit of heavy duty sitting.
Well, I've got another half-hour of biking to do, and can't think of anything else to whine about in my LJ, so guess I'll post this and see if I can figure out what to write next in the NanoNovel.
Okay, yeah, I do know what to write next. Just need to motivate myself to write it.
*
Got a little writing done. Scene hasn't gelled for me yet. It'll come. Did another 14 miles in an hour on the bike. Whew.
* No, I have no idea how this would translate into real world biking terms. I'm pretty sure the speeds are still inflated even at the mid-range resistance, though.
