author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Today is my second day using 4thewords to improve my daily writing routine, and already I've figured out how to use it better.

So, like I said, you pick a monster to battle and then you battle it. But on what criteria do you pick it? If you're me, you want to pick it based on the next quest you hope to solve. But you feel like you have to pick the monster whose target word count matches the estimated size of the next writing task. So you look at something like a Wiwaz (a variant of malign animated marionette) and you think, "I want to defeat that critter, it would complete my Dungeon Marionettes quest. But my current task is only good for about 600 new words, tops. Besides, with a 1,667-word target, the Wiwaz is obviously geared toward one's daily NaNoWriMo session. I should save it for when I work on my novel and just queue up a Persea for now."

But hopefully you're not me. I mean, I'm me, and there's not room enough in here for both of us. And you don't want to be short-sighted like that. You don't want to just look at the monster's target word count--you want to look a the time allotted to reach it.

A Wiwaz has a target of 1667 words and a time-limit of 24 hours. Because one Wiwaz equals one day's worth of NaNoWriMo writing.

Immediately I realized that, my process changed. Instead of carefully choosing a monster based on how closely it approximated the size of my current task, then typing like hell once the battle started... I initiated battle with the monster I really wanted to defeat, then calmly went about my day. I got done with the fictionette draft and its author's note, saw that I still had 22 hours left to defeat the Wiwaz, and decided I had time for a leisurely dinner break.

This calls for some discernment, of course. Not every monster has as roomy a deadline by which to hit its target word count. But the basic strategy stands: Consider potential monster battles from the standpoint of not a headlong sprint but a reasonable workday shift. Like, yes, I'm probably going to write 1500 words over the next two hours, given the tasks I've scheduled for that time. Then the battle becomes a vector of accountability: I'd better stay focused and keep my breaks short, because now I have to get both those tasks done over those next two hours.

The moral of the story is, gamification was made for us, and not us for gamification!

(Meanwhile, 4thewords tells me I've written 3,355 words today over 156 minutes--and I haven't even gotten to the novel yet. And I will. Believe it. When I'm done with the Wiwaz I want to go after the Dark Magician right away. That's about 1800 words. I'd love to bash out an 1800-word chunk of novel tonight.)