{"id":1280,"date":"2013-11-07T21:46:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T05:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2013-11-07T21:46:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T05:46:19","slug":"hustle-flow-and-adventures-in-pwfwrimo-rprgwrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1280","title":{"rendered":"Hustle, Flow, and adventures in #PWFWriMo & #RPRGWriMo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week, I talked about where I was wobbling in my teaching practice. This week I want to describe a new pose I am trying out.<\/p>\n

This week\u00a0<\/del>month I\u2019m trying out a pose of sustained writing and \u201chustle.\u201d<\/p>\n

This month is National Novel Writing Month<\/a>\u2013colloquially NaNoWriMo<\/a>, which challenges participants to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. It\u2019s a daunting number of words, but when broken into daily amounts (just shy of 1700 words per day) it\u2019s \u2026 less daunting (?). I\u2019ve never actually done it. However, I did challenge my 12th<\/sup> graders to participate several years ago. One of my students, Sam, was already a novelist in her own right and the month of November was one where she was co-teaching the class with me and coaching her peers with myriad writing strategies. I talk a bit more about this process of student-driven writing instruction in my book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In any case, while I\u2019m not writing a novel this month (or in the foreseeable future), I am using the online momentum of NaNoWriMo to focus on getting significant wordage on two current research projects: my work with Cindy O\u2019Donnell-Allen on Pose\/Wobble\/Flow and my work exploring the literacy practices enacted in tabletop roleplaying games<\/a>. I am calling these two projects, respectively, #PWFWriMo and #RPGWriMo. (There\u2019s also a contingent of academics tweeting to the hashtag #AcWriMo that I\u2019ve been lurking around.)<\/p>\n

I want to describe my writing practices briefly. First of all my rules for my month of #NaNoWriMo are as follows: every day I will publicly update my progress on Twitter \u2013 it forces me to feel accountable and to feel bad on the days in November when I don\u2019t write. A day of writing starts when I wake up and ends when I go to sleep. That means even if I\u2019m writing well after midnight, it\u2019s the same day (so chill out imaginary time-sticklers!). I\u2019m also keeping two tracking systems. On my computer I have a simple Excel file where I list the actual words I write each day. It looks like this:<\/p>\n

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In my notebook I have a chart that measures writing in increments of 250 words at a time. It looks like this:<\/p>\n

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I will write, at a later time about how I am using Scrivener<\/a> to allow me to organize my jumble of verbs and haphazard sentences into something useful. For now, here is a screenshot of in-progress messiness and varying writing prompt:<\/p>\n

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What I think is important to share here isn\u2019t how awesome it feels to be 15,000+ words deep into a couple of projects that I am working on. Instead, I am interested in how reading and writing are fundamentally different<\/i> in 2013. When I write in the morning and add my progress to a growing number of tweets, I am joining a community of other writers. I feel accountable because of how technology is connecting my literacy practices with others. It also allows me to engage in some good ol\u2019 shit-talking with my friend Daye:<\/p>\n

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Reading comments in this post<\/a> from last week, I\u2019ve been thinking about my writing practices this week and the day-to-day stress of work and teaching and home life. I mean, it\u2019s not like my workload is reduced during the month I\u2019m choosing to put (digital) pen to (digital) paper. I think about those frustrating years of working a weekend job and teaching at the same time\u2013trying to cram in grading student essays while working the graveyard shift at a newsstand on Sunset Blvd. Not fun. Cindy talks about GYST: Get Your Shit Together. I wonder if that\u2019s an appropriate \u201cpose\u201d I can take on. It sure is something I wobble with on any given day. One of my early teaching mentors, Jeff Duncan-Andrade<\/a>, talked about being a teacher and having to \u201chustle.\u201d And I think about treating my writing and “real” responsibilities as hustle. In the past when I\u2019ve played around with things like NaNoWriMo, I have approached it like this:<\/p>\n

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And this month I\u2019m trying to approach it like this (while still keeping everything else somewhat together):<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m only a quarter deep into what is a long month of writing, so we\u2019ll see how long I can keep this pose going. I know there will be days I am not productive but I also know (and have felt) the awesome flow of cranking out 2,000 words on a beautiful Sunday morning. We\u2019ll see where this pose takes me.<\/p>\n

What new pose are you trying out?<\/p>\n

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[Also: it’s not too late to jump on the #NaNoWriMo bandwagon! If you get some awesome writing done, be sure to let my friend Daye<\/a> know how much better you are doing.]<\/p>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>