The best thing you can give yourself when writing is Easter eggs.
No, not the chocolate ones, although if you have any tucked away in the freezer then yes, by all means, definitely treat yourself at some point when you deserve it next month.
Every writer has certain things they adore writing. Certain tropes or situations or events just get you all excited and ready to jump in the middle of it. I absolutely love writing snappy dialogue between sarcastic characters. I also absolutely love infusing history with fantastical elements, which is why I eat up genres like steampunk.
In my outlining process I’ve added a new series of cards to my ring with Easter egg ideas. Now, I won’t be able to use all of them, I’m sure, but there’s quite a few promising ones that I’m sure will jumpstart my imagination and make me excited to spice up scenes as I work through them.
Writing isn’t always glamorous work, and it’s easy to fall into ruts, fixated on where you think the story should be headed, but have zero motivation to get it there. I’ve learned that when that happens I have lost interest. No one is going to want to finish a book where the writer isn’t excited about the material, it bleeds right through the paper. So I monitor my attention span. If I start drifting or searching out distractions then it’s time to evaluate where the story is headed.
That’s time consuming work, and not productive when you’re in the middle of NaNo. I take an afternoon or so and daydream about all the things that excite me to read and write. How many of them will fit into a story? It’s always more than I think. So I put them on my notecards and stick them in the outline where they seem to fit. This November as I work my way through the outline I’ll have plenty of prompts and inspiration to keep the momentum going.
When the goal is 50k you need a lot of steady momentum. It’s not worth pushing through unless you’re writing what you love.
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