One Mile at a Time, One Scene at a Time

On shorter bike rides, I mentally pass the time between great inspirations by thinking
“Boy, is it nice out today” (observational), “I wonder if I can catch/keep up with that hottie for a whole mile”
(challenging/fantasy) and “I’m at the half-way point of a 30-mile ride. One more mile and I’ll be at 8/15ths!”
(computationally distracting). On longer rides, these mental games would devolve into despair if I thought of where I was overall.
I cope by breaking the longer ride down into segments.
For example, a 65-mile ride becomes a thirty-five mile ride,
with a quick break at the rest stop, and three 10s, each marked by jubilation whenever
the tens digit of the odometer flips. It depends on the ride, though.
On the first day of this year’s
RSVP, the ride
was broken into a twenty, two tens, and twenty-two threes.
It came very close to being one mile at a time.

I’m having the same experience with NaNoWriMo.
After six days, I’m at 11,107 words. This is slightly ahead of schedule,
but I’m already tired. According to NaNo-lore, the coming two weeks could be ones of despair as I wrack my brain trying to define my characters and pull a plot out of a hat. I knew this was coming, and will try to apply the “one mile at a time” concept to writing: One scene at a time. Instead of being 11,107/50,000ths done, I’m on chapter three, with another 4,000 words to go.

Of course, I’ll let you know how it works out.