May Day.
Beltane.
The first of May.
It’s a brand new month starting on a Sunday, and the day practically felt like summer.
I ended up with approximately 56,000 words in my 130-page Came NaNoWriMo project. While I didn’t really stick to my original plan, I am pleased with the accomplishment. Even better, I have a plan for the next step, which I have never taken with a NaNoWriMo project before: review and revision. In the past, I get to the end, breathe a sigh of relief, and pretty much walk away.
This time, I am going to read through everything I wrote during the month of April and expand on it. And I am going to do it longhand. I printed out the document and pulled out a notebook. Actually, I built a notebook. A few years ago I came across something called a disc-bound notebook. Pages and covers were held together by plastic discs along one edge. The advantage is that you can add, remove, and rearrange pages. Since I am not sure how many pages I will need for the project, being able to adjust the number means that I won’t end up with too many or too few. Being able to rearrange the pages means that I can pull an idea out, expand on it, and put it in a separate section.
The original content will be written in black ink, and any additions or revisions will be written in whatever other color strikes my fancy. I am starting with purple.
It’s a daunting task, but I think that it is going to be an excellent writing exercise. I haven’t set a deadline. I am just going to see how it goes and work on it in small chunks.
Some of my other ongoing projects did not fare as well in April. I finished reading one book instead of two, and I only cast of one pair of socks (although I think I am still on track for my goal of 25 pairs in a year) and made very little progress on sweater knitting. My regular journal doesn’t have any entries for about the last half of April because I used all of those words toward my Camp project, which is fine because my real writing goal is to write every day, and that daily discipline is still intact.
With the start of a new month, I can pick up the projects which got put down for a while and even start some new projects. This is an unfamiliar feeling. Usually when I don’t meet a goal, I have a sense of failure. Now I have a feeling of excitement about being able to get back to projects which were interrupted.
I am quite certain that this new mindset and outlook is due to tackling projects in smaller increments and to successfully working on those projects every day for a while. If I have done a small bit of something every day for several months and then I miss a day or two or even a week, I know that all I have to do is the next increment, and I will be back to making progress.
It turns out that the compounding effect of incremental change actually gives you some cushion so that there isn’t a feeling of regressing. The progress you have made so far is still there, so all you need to do is take the next step forward, and you are back on track. Who knew?
Small Town Hermit 
The biggest changes in our lives often come from the smallest steps. I believe in doing small things, and not going for home runs every time, and I think you’re feeling that way too.
When it comes to journalling, may I suggest doing ‘a sentence a day’ type of deal? I have kept my daily habit for years because I don’t stress myself out on how long the entry needs to be. Just as long as I capture something unique about a day (and have something to look back to when I wonder where all the time went).
Anyway, wishing you all the best with your goals!
LikeLike
I have pretty much let go of the bullet journal idea, at least as far as what I consider the “hard core” aspects of the process — creating all sorts of spreads, keeping track of daily\weekly\monthly appointments, events, and tasks. My life is just not that complex. I do make a list of tasks and accomplishments for the day, and sometimes I write more. Also, I am much too wordy for bullet points.
What has become quite rewarding is my Morning Pages practice, which I started in March. It means that I write every day, and it clears the decks and quiets the voices a bit. If more writing happens, great. If not, I haven’t missed out on writing for the day.
LikeLiked by 1 person