Writer's block, an owner's guide: NaNoWriMo research info (very short)
Very briefly, because it’s late at night and I have things to do tomorrow. I finally finished analyzing more than a thousand reports made by participants in that research I told you about and here are a few bullet points that I’ll spill for you from my memory:
1. productivity in writing IS correlated with the “metamotivational states” described by reversal theory, specifically with the telic, alloic, conformity and mastery states. More about this when I’m awake.
2. research participants who heard from me every day had a 50% better chance of staying the course for the whole month compared to those who didn’t.
3. research participants who heard from me every day wrote more than those who didn’t.
4. research participants wrote more than regular NaNoWriMo participants (no big surprise there but good to have it confirmed).
So what does all this mean? It means scientific support for a lot of what I’ve been suggesting here since the middle of 2004 - that some of the psychology of writing can be accounted for by the work of Apter, Deci, Amabile and the rest of ‘em, and that writers can be helped by those insights. I’ll say more about this in Today I Write.
And tonight I sleep.
Published on December 28, 2005 at 2:26 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/nanowrimo-research-info-very-short.html
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