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[devrat.livejournal.com]

Hello, everyone. I'm Dev, third year WriMo, looking forward to my second win. I wanted to share my personal little trick for staying motivated.



My first year someone on the NaNo board mentioned that she made a daily word goal chart and gave herself a gold star (you know, the little star stickers you got in school?) every time she made it. I altered the idea a bit and made myself a Motivational Star Chart!

I took a 5x3 index card and drew 50 blocks on it (5 rows, 10 columns.) Each block represented 1000 words. Every time I wrote 1000 words, I got a star. I bought a pack of multicolored stars (red, blue, green, silver and gold.) Every ten thousand words I would get a new colored star.

I had a bigger, more elaborate one for 2003, but I didn't take a picture of it. Here's my 2002 one (on the left; the one on the right is my friend Julia's.)


Here is the online version of last year's. This year it'll be going in an entry in my writing journal.

It was so helpful, because every star was like one more step closer to the goal. I would be sitting at 19,800 words, ready to give up and think, "No! If I just write another 200 words, I get another star!!"

Then I would write those 200 and think, "Wait... if I write just 1000 more words, I get a new color! Green star!!"

Silly, yeah, but it worked.



Also, I did a book cover. Of course.





I was never very good at smoke.

Here's my 2003 cover, of which I'm really proud. 'Cause hey, it's a duck in a viking helmet.