Adjusting to life after NaNoWriMo aka reclaiming your life but still making writing a priority

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I promised everyone in my NaNoWriMo area that I’d take requests if there was a topic they wanted a blog post about. So, one intrepid Wrimo asked:

Adjusting to life after NaNo is HARD. I’ll have to remember this icky feeling I’ve had all December for next year…the whole “not writing because I’m trying to get holiday stuff done and I deserve to relax, but it’s all making me feel miserable and unproductive” lethargy and just keep writing come December.

So here we are. Because we’ve all been there. NaNoWriMo can be stressful and annoying while your in it but once it’s over… you kind of miss it no matter how badly you need a break. And then you crash land in the middle of the holiday season so you simply trade one kind of stress for another. It’s a relief to not be writing while you’re running around buying presents, decorating and doing the usual holiday stuff but, at the same time, not having the time to write at all gives you this feeling of failure after spending 30 days living and dying by the word count. And if you don’t write a single word all December, you do feel like a word-less failure when the dust settles in January.

The simplest cure for a NaNoWriMo hangover is hair of the dog. Whenever you can eek out time, do some writing. Ideally you want to keep working on your NaNo novel in progress but, really, any writing will do to keep your creatives juices lubricated. Blog posts, diary entries, stream of consciousness journals from the perspective of one of your characters… write anything at all, especially if you can do a little bit each day. A little bit is always better than nothing.

While stolen moments of writing may be all you can afford during a busy time like the holiday season once you settle back into “ordinary time” you should set yourself a writing goal. Do you want to set a date deadline to finish the novel by or just an overall word count goal per day, week or month? That’s up to you and your writing goals. But having a NaNoWriMo like goal to keep you productive and focused will help to chase away the NaNo blues. You may not accomplish as much in the ordinary time as you did during National Novel Writing Month but forming consistent writing habits is the best thing that you can do for yourself as a writer.

But that’s just my advice. I’m hoping other writers and NaNoWriMo veterans will weigh in with their advice to combat Post NaNoWriMo Letdown Syndrome.