Do the Math:

[writingvixen.livejournal.com]

Just did the math:

November: 721 hours
Sleep: 240 hours
------
Leaving: 481 hours

So:

November: 481 hours
Eating/Hygiene: 45 hours
------
Leaving: 436 hours

So:

November: 436 hours
Work/School: 160 hours
------
Leaving: 276 hours

So:

November: 276 hours
Life: 36 hours
------
Leaving: 240 hours

So:

November: 240 hours

What are you going to do with those 240 hours? That's 8 hours* a day. You can use those to figure out how he met his mother, to play on the computer, obsess over your glitch, or farmville.

Or:

You could write a novel.

I choose plan B. How about you?

*On average. Again, it's different for everyone, but still it's jarring just how much time we really DO have when you break it down.

Comments

[hodisemajani.livejournal.com]

GLITCH! Duh! (JK...although)

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

I got more like 220 hours for work/communting (22 days x 9 hours a day). Canadian, so no Thanksgiving :(

That puts me at 180 hours, or 278 words per hour.

[gtodt.livejournal.com]

inspired!

[meketserqet.livejournal.com]

i tried this out for giggles, approximating my own numbers... and hey, look at that! 6 hours a day! most of that is weekend time, really, because unless i'm bending time and space i'm not getting those 6 hours in after work, but... it's really encouraging! and makes the whole process seem considerably less intimidating :D

[zarkia.livejournal.com]

This is such a cool way of breaking it down. I'd broken it into pages (at an average of 250 words per page) and this really helps me see how many pages I have to write per hour. Thank you.

[pinkphoenix1985.livejournal.com]

Plan B with RL thrown in of course ;)

[romani-blood.livejournal.com]

Plan B, mixed with RL and a bit of Diablo 3. ;)

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

Plan B with added Dr Who!

[lorataprose.livejournal.com]

I tell people who are starting NaNoWriMo to take the week before and mark down all the time they spend doing things that aren't absolutely essential. Unless they have small children, it's almost always a surprisingly large amount of time. That's your point of no return; after that, any other reasons are nothing but excuses. ;)

[ohfiyera.livejournal.com]

721 hours in November.
I require about 8 hours of sleep per night to function normally, so 240 hours of sleep is pretty accurate.

That leaves 481 hours.

I estimate my eating/hygiene to take about 1 hour per day (taking into consideration that I do not waste time cooking meals during November)

451 hours.

I work 50 hours per week.

230 hours (approx) remaining

I have class 10 hours a week.

190 hours remaining.

Homework?

150 hours remaining.

I spend 2 hours in commute to work and class each day.

90 hours remain.

555 words per free hour or I have to start sacrificing sleep.

Yeah, I can still do it. Somehow...

[mutive.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it more in terms of hours free.

On my average week day, I have about an hour of writing in the morning + 1 in the evening. This first week isn't going to have that (thanks to a house guest + a trip), but we'll see what I can get in despite the disruption. There's also Thanksgiving, which is going to scrub at least a few days from my life.

Still, let's say that I have 3 weeks of writing to get a novel done in, at 2 hours a day...

That brings me to needing to write about 1,200 words an hour. Which is a fair amount, but not undoable. It works out to 20 wpm, and I type around 100 wpm. So I've got a fair amount of distance between my hands typing and my brain producing output.

Of course, this does mean that I will need to work at writing for 2 hours every day, three weeks out of the month. (That I can't just fiddle around with Facebook during that time.) But I got ~1,700 words done this morning (in an hour), so I'm quite sure I'm capable of it. (And maybe be able to squeeze in three or so hours on the weekends.)