The Creativity Project: Sprints and Meet-Ups
Using a little accountability to get words on the page
I very rarely do writing meet-ups. I’m easily distractible so I don’t want to feed into that. But with everything that happened in the last few years, I was feeling the need to be around other writers.
I went to my local NaNoWriMo’s Evening of Scribing Fearlessly, which was a lock-in event at a library where the goal was to get as many words as humanly possible. I had already hit my goal for the month, but was curious to see how many more words I could get.
The vibe was amazing because everyone was there with the same goal in mind: words on the page. Lots of laughter, a few good-natured glares when it came out that I was already at fifty thousand words. We did a lot of sprints and had a potluck.
While I was super distracted by chatting with other writers and collaborating on ideas for their books, I still managed to get an additional five thousand words on my book (which equaled five stickers on my nametag). I left the event with a new pep in my step and was ready to focus on my book.
The other thing I started around that time was online sprints. I’m a part of an online community of writers who do a lot of sprints. Sometimes, I would manage to catch the sprints live and that seemed to work for me. It gave me the accountability I needed by responding to how many words I was getting in.
If I couldn’t catch a live, I would pull up a replay, but those didn’t fully work as well for me. They focused me more than me just sitting at my desk with random videos playing in the background.
I also had a writer date with one of my friends. We went to a coffee shop and set up our things. No talking for the most part, it was just two people working on separate projects. I won’t lie, that focused me like nothing else. Instead of letting myself mess around on my phone, I stuck to the writing at hand. Mostly because I didn’t want to be the slacker in our group.
While none of these are everyday solutions to my focus problem, they do help to adjust my concentration for the next following days. I’m still working on a long-term solution to rein in my concentration.
Do you have any little tricks or tips for me to try?
