Hello friends!

It’s been slow-going working on my TNG fanfic. Early in October, I toyed with the idea of being a NaNo Rebel with the goal of writing 50,000 words of literally anything at all. At the time, I meant fanfic, original fic, and academic writing.

But at 4 AM this morning, I decided to return to that, with a much more expansive definition of “literally anything at all.”

Here are the things I’ve added to my word count so far:

  • Blog posts (including short notes)
  • Emails
  • Texts
  • Slack messages
  • Meeting agendas
  • Comments on other people’s documents
  • Forum posts

And once I log back into social media tomorrow (I’m posting this via micropub), I’m going to add replies and quote tweets.

Why am I being so generous to myself with this definition?

A lot of the time, I use a goal like NaNoWriMo to prove to myself that I “can* write.

But lately, I’ve felt not that I have writer’s block, exactly, but that I’m just at a moment in life when writing is beyond my current capacity, that I just don’t have the bandwidth to write at present.

So I’m using this expansive definition to prove to myself that I do write, that I an writing, even when I feel like I can’t.

How’s NaNo going for you? Can you find a way to be more generous with yourself this month?