Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Another month has begun, this one with a strong temporal landmark attached to it for writers, National Novel Writing Month.  It appears that I started dabbling in NaNoWriMo twenty years ago, though I didn't start dwelling on the subject until 2016. Then I wrote about it quite a bit.

Well, poor old NaNoWriMo has been experiencing some troubles the last couple of years. I thought I'd written about them here a few months ago, but, nope. I will explain to the extent that I can:

1. NaNoWriMo has forums, which I've never been part of for what that's worth. But an issue arose with how forums were being moderated, particularly forums for young writers. 
2. NaNoWriMo is taking a position of neutrality on the use of AI in writing. The...discord...around NaNoWriMo's original statement on the subject came up a couple of months ago. 

I mention all this because it's November and National Novel Writing Month and we all want to keep up on what's going on in the writing world, non? Also, it leads into an article by Shaunta Grimes on slow writing. 

NaNoWriMo Is Fast, But I Am Slow

I mean, I am seriously slow. So you can understand why I was interested when I saw Shaunta Grimes' The Write Brain article, I'm officially done with NaNoWriMo. Lets start a Slow Writing Movement back in September. 

She's creating a program and community called Book-a-Year Project that involves writing a book over a year, instead of a month. Her plan includes creating a writing practice. There will be mentoring letters and daily links to a poem, an essay, and short story to read. There's a monthly book club. And more.

This sounds fantastic, even though I am shifting toward writing short form work instead of novels. What I particularly like about Grimes' plan is that it actually offers things to do, versus talking about taking care of yourself and smelling the flowers. Both of which, I'd like to point out, take time. I was excited as I read about her article

And then I began to feel overwhelmed. This is too much for me. Because, remember, I am truly slow. I get daily Book Riot emails with lists of ebooks on sale, and I can't keep up with those. There's a monthly subscription involved with the Book-a-Year Project, so I hadn't even gotten involved yet and I, a truly slow person, was feeling pressure because I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up on something I was paying for.

But I love the idea of slow writing and have written here before about trying to find ways to do slow work. So I am inspired now to do more research on this. November, I feel, is a perfect time to be thinking about doing something new, because maybe I can have a plan in place for me for the new year.

The new year being a temporal landmark and all.

Just in: I had a perhaps serendipitous thing happen today that could impact my slow work studies. I'll let you know for sure next week.