I also found a new inspiration to keep me going. If planning my novel out with the Snowflake Method keeps me going by giving me something concrete to work with, stumbling upon the #OctWritingChallenge hashtag on Twitter gave me some external motivation.
National Novel Writing Month is next month, and next week's blog post will be on that, and hopefully by then I will have finally decided whether to have The Talented's sequel or The Emperor's Daughter's sequel for my NaNo project this year. However, my challenge for this month is only 500 words or 1 hour of editing a day.
This Monthly Twitter Writing Challenge has apparently been going on for years, originally geared toward people who couldn't meet NaNoWriMo's goal of 50,000 words in a month because life is just too busy but could commit to a smaller goal of 500 words a day, and so far it has really worked to inspire me to hit a very reachable goal. 500 words a day is just enough that you have to make a point of it, because you won't accidentally stumble into it, but isn't so much that you have to set the rest of your life on hold.
It's also a nice change from NaNo because it's 500 words every day. No making up for missed days. And you get to share it on Twitter, which makes for a fun community experience.
It's also getting me ready for NaNo by getting me writing daily again, a habit which is great to have and which I suffer to form again once I've broken it.
Unfortunately, blog posts don't count for #OctWritingChallenge, so I'm off to working on my novel again. There's a new 500 words/day writing challenge every month, so if you want to write in NaNo but can't manage 50k, check out #NovWritingChallenge on November 1st.