Well, it’s been rough. I was INCREDIBLY optimistic about the course this month would take and I think I hit my primary daily writing target only once so far, let alone my daily secondary target of getting enough words to exclude my blog posts from my daily writing totals. I’ve been so busy with work and then so burned out from how busy I was that I when I finally go home and eat dinner, I’ve only got enough time and energy to spend an hour listlessly trying to write before shuffling off to bed. Even the weekend wasn’t much better since all the exhaustion I’d been putting off since I couldn’t afford to feel tired during my incredibly busy work days came crashing back down on me. I did almost nothing but play Spider-Man (the PS4 one, since I never finished the DLC) the entire time. I did eventually finish a blog post and do my laundry, but I was so wiped out that writing the post took three times longer than it should have and I didn’t even fold my clean laundry. What little energy I had for stuff beyond all that was spent on doing my dishes, a little bit of cooking, and taking care of things like paying my bills and other such unfortunate necessities. It has been rough mentally, emotionally, and physically these past few days, and even now that it seems like the worst has passed (though it remains to be seen if this will stay true since it’s not like I anticipated the horrible, frantic, and exhausting week I’ve had since the month began) I am barely staying on my feet as I struggle to remain functional despite the exhaustion.
Continue readingGoals
Returning to the Mines
After a little bit over two years, I returned to Minecraft. Even though I played back in mid to late 2020, I didn’t really get into it much. One of my friends wanted to run a server and wound up setting up a huge number of automated farms to generate pretty much every type of material we could want, all the resources we could trade for, and so many XP farms that we never ran into issues when it came to enchanting things. We even cleared The End and got everyone on the server kitted out with Elytra (a cape that lets you glide or even fly if you use fireworks while gliding) so that travel become easy and safe. Except in the Nether, where there was lava everywhere and one false step could not just kill you, but destroy every item you had. Which, you know, falling to your death in The End could also do, since that’s above a massive, endless void, but you usually had time to save yourself if you were flying when this happened.. It was a lot of fun, but it took a lot of the procedural joy out of the game, when everything became easily available.
Continue readingReflections On My Birthday
Today is my birthday (the day of writing this, not the day of posting it) and, after waiting my entire life for this moment, it finally arrived. My Golden Birthday (or Champaign Birthday or Lucky Birthday, depending on where you’re from). I turned thirty-one on the thirty-first of August. I was always very excited as a child about the idea of a Golden Birthday and always a little sad that it would take me so long to experience mine. As I got older, I comforted myself by saying at least I’d be able to have a real party. In the last decade, though, I’ve stopped caring. I don’t really like to make a big fuss about myself. I like it when other people fuss over me, of course. Who doesn’t love attention from the people you care about? But I also don’t like people making a fuss over me when I’m in a bad mood and, as I mentioned in the post that actually went up on the 31st, I’m usually not in a good mood during the month of August. This year has been no exception and, in fact, might be one of the worst in the last decade thanks to everything else I’ve got going on.
Continue readingI Don’t Usually Remember My Dreams And Today I’m Glad I Don’t.
I rarely remember my dreams. I’m not sure why, though I’d bet it has to do with my various sleep issues and how rarely I feel properly rested, but this has been my experience for my entire life. I can’t remember a time in my life that I recall waking up with the details of a dream in my mind more than once in a long while. Most of the time, the dreams I do recall are bad ones, full of negative emotions and unpleasant images perhaps only still present in my mind because the experience of these dreams was so awful that I shook myself awake from them. The rest are a general smattering of the sort of odd, disconnected ideas and sequences that seem to form most dreams and are utterly unremarkable in any way other than their rarity.
Continue readingReasonable NaNoWriMo Goals
Whenever I do something that I know will be difficult or particularly taxing, like take my current level of stress and work and dial it all up a notch by deciding to participate in a month-long writing event, I like to set two separate goals for myself at the outset. Goal one is my realistic goal. It is something I know I can meet with a reasonable amount of effort no matter what happens. My second goal is more aspirational, something I think I can do but that might take more than just effort to make it happen. For instance, in NaNoWriMo 2021, my primary goal is to write in a book project every day. My secondary goals is to write 50,000 words in that book project over the course of a month.
Continue readingThis Tired Refrain
Not gonna lie, I was really hoping to start the month on better footing. I’m writing this on November first and pushing a bunch of other posts around so it can go up closer to the day I’m writing it, just so this doesn’t go up a week later and wind up completely detached from the reality in which I wrote it. Dunno how much I’ll be doing this, since I do want to keep things a bit more journal-y while working my way through Nation Novel Writing Month, but I expect I’ll also be tired, slightly overworked, and incredibly bad at editing anything as I write it. So we’ll see. I like to avoid posting error-filled blog entries if I can avoid it.
Continue readingAiming for Balance
One of my goals for this year is to find balance in my life. While it might seem like this statement is so vague as to be entirely useless, I kind of planned it that way. I get so caught up in my goals and working on projects that I find it difficult to split my attention or to stay focused on big goals instead of little ones. So, instead of giving myself narrow, specific goals to work on or work towards, I’m keeping them general and focusing on the big picture. Instead of trying to lose weight this year or trying to prioritize my mental wellness, I want to be healthy. Instead of updating my blog every day, working on a book, or running three D&D campaigns, I want to create. Instead of trying to stay three weeks ahead in blog posts or reading a book a week, I want to find balance between work and relaxation.
NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 14 (11/14)
Well, yesterday was also a bust. I got a couple hundred words written, but sleep deprivation and the temptation of a new Fallout game coupled with the temptation of the updated Spyro game proved too strong for me. Instead of writing, I played some Fallout 76, got Chinese food, watched my roommate relive Spyro, and then went to bed. That was plenty for yesterday, to be honest.
As you can clearly see by today’s rather late post, today isn’t much better. I’ve been trying to ride the line between cutting down on my goals for this month and getting enough rest to recover from the emotional and stress burnout resulting from the combined week of being super busy with extrovert stuff at work and dealing with the news about my grandfather’s health. As it turns out, the line between then is on the wrong side of “getting enough rest.” and I’ve actually been getting worse instead of better. Unfortunately, it took me three busy days at work and three nights without enough sleep to realize that. At least the last night of not enough rest wasn’t a dumb choice this time. I just couldn’t sleep, which is a frequent side-effect of long-lasting high-stress periods and burnout.
It took a Vlog brothers update for me to realize what was going on, too. I was under the impression that I’d just kick it into gear like I always do during periods like this and eventually get everything done. I can pull of some pretty ridiculous stuff when the situation is right, but I rarely do it when I’m already burned out and tired from previous times I pulled off something ridiculous. Like spending a week talking to people and running meetings every day that should have been spent quietly while processing the storm of emotions that comes from learning my grandpa, who gave me most of my nice clothes and my favorite jacket because we are the same size. Well, we used to be. The same grandpa who loves telling me about his coin collection and who has gotten me interested in the history and stories behind rare coins. It’s difficult to see a future without him in it, even if I’ve always know I’d get there eventually.
I always try to make excuses for continuing my writing. I often say it’s therapeutic, that it helps me work through difficult emotions and complex thoughts that need some adjusting before I can really see the shape of them. What I conveniently leave out every time I tell myself this is that the therapeutic part comes from doing free-form writing exercises, like my Sunday flash fiction, Friday poetry, or Saturday musing posts. I’m not going to get anything therapeutic from working on a story I’ve already formed without putting in the work to significantly change it. Some stories I could work it into, but not either of the ones I’m working on this month. I’d have to change them so much they’d be completely different stories and maybe even different genres. The closest I get to therapeutic writing is the reflection part of every day’s National Novel Writing Month post and part of me feels guilty for putting all this in here since I’m really not sure how much of this you all want to read. I originally planned to write about my progress here and how the writing stuff was going, but I’ve spent half of the month doing almost no writing so that’s kind of a bust.
Maybe the answer is giving up on the romance novel. I’ve barely written any of that, only a couple thousand or so words, and I’m already planning to rewrite those words entirely so it would make sense to just stop trying to do that. I already gave up on trying to do Coldheart and Iron posts every Tuesday, still. I did, however, just shift my plans so I’d do four Coldheart and Iron posts ahead of time, to be posted from December first to December fourth, so I’d be entirely caught up as of that Tuesday and so I could take a break to rest up from a month of writing like crazy. I don’t want to stop the blog because I’m really proud of my consistency here. Daily posts. Even if the post is going up at half an hour before midnight because I almost forgot and had a wedding, so all I could do is copy and paste a poem I’d been saving for an emergency into the WordPress app on my phone and then post it without fixing the weird crap WordPress does to my typical poetry formatting. This matters to me. I’ve done a year of posts, but I’d still like to be able to say “I did this thing for the entirety of 2018.” I’d also like to say that about 2019. I wouldn’t mind being able to say that about every year. It’s kind of a big deal and I can’t imagine it not having a positive impact on my life. Plus, I don’t really want to be one of those writers who lands a publishing deal that allows me to support myself on my writing who then stops doing stuff like my free blog.
I love writing. I love stringing words together and turning my ideas into stories. I love sharing my writing on the off-chance that it could help someone else and I love having a place to put this stuff that makes me feel seen, even if it’s only by one person in a day. I’d love to be able to throw sense to the wind and just pump out the rest of my writing goals in the seventeen days (counting today) I have left in the month, especially because I know I could probably do it. I also know the burnout would be catastrophic unless I took more time off of work and I really can’t afford that. Next week’s time away from work for US Thanksgiving won’t be the break it usually is, either, since I’ll be spending more time with family on account of my grandfather’s declining health. It’ll just be another weekend. My last weekend to make up for any lost time.
I have a lot of really good reasons to dial down my goals, especially considering I’ll still break ninety-thousand words this month even if I just stick to my blog and my National Novel Writing Month project. That’d be a new record of words written in a month for me, which is an admirable goal in its own right. I still want to throw my trepidation and good sense to the wind by stubbornly declaring I’ll stick to my original goals, though. Even now. I’ve actually deleted the words I wrote saying that. I need to rest and, as much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think I can do everything I said out to do this month. Just the thought of trying to do everything is overwhelming, and being overwhelmed takes more time than I’d like to give it.
This feels a lot like defeat, but it isn’t. It’s a chance to actually succeed without hurting myself. It’s going to take a lot of mental repetition to make that thought stick, but it’s true. I hope your goals are going better than my original ones are. I hope they’re going as well as my adjusted goals are, since I’m not far off track when it comes to those. Either way, I believe in your ability to do this and I wish you the best of luck today and tomorrow.
Daily Prompt
Failure is a part of life. Failure also makes for good stories because most people find characters who do nothing but succeed to be rather boring. There are a thousand proverbs and parables about learning from failure but success is often seen as the end of the road. That being said, failure can be difficult to overcome or to work through, and some people are better at it than others. How does your protagonist handle failure, big or small? If they fail, are they pushed on to try harder next time or do they feel defeated or beaten? Show your protagonist responding to failure (you can include the part where they fail, but that’s not necessary) and how it informs the way they decide to move forward in your story.
Sharing Inspiration
If you want some more examples of excellent storytelling, then you need to check out Hamilton. This musical is one of the best, most-clever bits of writing I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness and the musical itself is a work of absolute beauty. The lyrics and music are stunning, constantly referencing itself, foreshadowing future events, and so damn catchy I still haven’t gotten the music out of my head three months later. Not that I want it out, either. Even though it’s pretty sad in the end and it feeds into one of my biggest fears (of never having enough time), I still can’t stop listening to it. This is one of those things that marks a turning point in the way the world functions. After Hamilton, musical theater has a whole new dimension to it and anyone going for the standard “classic” stuff is missing out on the brand new world Lin-Manuel Miranda has opened our eyes to.
Helpful Tips
I have a really bad habit of keeping snacks and drinks on hand for when I’m writing. Which generally means keeping them on hand as distractions from writing since I usually avoid any potential for getting my keyboard messy or wet, which means stopping my writing so I can have a snack while browsing twitter on my phone. This is a bad habit since it tends to promote both overeating and procrastination. It distracts me from getting words written and adds to what is typically a rather sedentary month for me since I work at a computer in my day job and then go right to my computer after work. Today’s tip is to find something that replaces the desire to snack with something more useful. I’d suggest gum, but I can’t stand it. Instead, I keep a bag of sourdough pretzels nears my computer. Since they have no dust or crap that sticks to your fingers, they’re safe to use with a keyboard. They’re also salty and really dusty, so they’re not something I can eat a lot of in any short amount of time. I’ll eat maybe two during a few hours of writing, which is a single serving. They also make me thirsty, which is where my gallon jug of water comes in. I drink about one of those an evening which keeps me well hydrated and makes me want to focus so I can get stuff written between hourly trips to the bathroom to deal with the excess liquid. It’s a process and it works for me, since it cuts down the crap I consume and it helps me maintain my focus on writing more. I don’t know if that’ll work for you, but exploring the ideas wouldn’t hurt.
NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 10 (11/10)
Expectations are heavy things. One or two are alright, if you’re up for them. Once you start to collect a lot of them, though, the weight can crush you. The thing is, not all of them are yours. Sure, your expectations can be problematic when you’re looking for something you probably won’t get, but other people’s are usually heavier in my experience. I can simply put my own down. If I drop someone else’s, I feel like I’m letting them down or disappointing them. They can come in the form of wonderful compliments, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone has their eyes on you. I love that I’ve inspired people, but I feel like now there’s pressure to continue inspiring people.
That’s sort of why I do this blog, though, if I’m going to set aside the main goals of “public accountability when it comes to my writing goals” and “having a place to put the stuff I write.” The reason I write the things I do and unabashedly post about my mental health and personal life is that I want to create a place where other people who are struggling can find some comfort, rest, or understanding. I know my audience isn’t huge, but I’ve got my own little corner of the internet and I’m doing my best to shout so anyone who wanders by can hear something that is supportive and hopefully helpful. If I’m inspiring people to write, that’s great! I’m so happy to be able to have a positive effect on the world (and that’s my real life goal right there). If people think of me when they hear about someone who works really hard, then I guess that’s pretty apt because I work my ass off most of the time. They might feel like expectations sometimes, but that’s my own problem to deal with. I’m the person who is taking them that way.
When I want to give up on writing, when nothing else is helping and the little voice in my head that constantly fills my thoughts with “nothing you do will ever be enough” and “there’s no point in trying because you and everything you do is worthless” is winning, I take the time to sit down and write out a list of reasons why I write. There are a lot of consistent things on the list that hearken back to my reasons for beings. Things like “to help make the world a better place” and “to give other people what my favorite books gave to me: a place escape and hide away from a world that sometimes felt like it was out to get me” are usually first. Then there are things like “because storytelling fulfills me in ways that nothing else ever has” and “I need something meaningful in my life and telling stories is more full of meaning that anything else I’ve ever considered” that come and go as the way I view my life shifts. The last things are the ones that change from one year to the next, or even one month to the next, like “because I’m going for two years of consecutive days without missing a blog post” or “I want to wrap up this project by a certain time.”
The list helps because it’s all about me and why I write. It has nothing to do with whoever reads my stuff, with people involved in my life, or what might be going on the world. It is focused entirely on the intrinsic value of writing and that little voice in my head has nothing to say about whether or not those things are true or worthwhile. Plus, it tends to lead to some really productive introspection that helps me center myself. Between yesterday and today, I think I’ve gotten my feet underneath myself again. Hopefully this next week of November will be more productive that the last.
I’m still not ready to talk about what’s going on in my life, but now it’s because I kind of want to focus on writing for a bit. There’s a time and a place for everything and sad stories that are going to require me to spend some time on emotional recovery should not be a part of trying to right the writing ship of this particular National Novel Writing Month. I’ve done almost not work on this weekend’s goals, so I’m going to forego sob stories and instead focus on trying to get a daily allotment of words written. Which is my new goal. Get words done every day. I need to dial it back while I’m getting back up to speed again. Otherwise, I’m just going to burn myself out getting nowhere. I’ll hopefully be able to write about my real progress for Monday’s blog post, but we’ll see.
I hope your weekend is off to a good start and that you’ve managed to continue making progress on your National Novel Writing Month project! I also hope your weekend continues to be good or improves and that you can make the time and energy to get some writing done. Good luck!
Daily Prompt
Action sequences can be really fun! Maybe there’s a fight brewing and your protagonist finally gets to show off their moves or maybe they drop a jar and, through a lucky combination of juggles, grabs, and kicks manages to keep it from hitting the floor. Whatever the reason there’s action, show it to us today! Write about the way the characters involved move through space, the way people respond to their movement, and make sure we know where everyone is so we can make sure that the person walking down the stairs who manages to securely catch the jar at the end actually had a clear line of effect from the person who gave it a last desperate kick to hopefully land it on the couch in the other room.
Sharing Inspiration
One of the most complex (in a good way), detailed stories I’ve ever read and enjoyed (sorry, Silmarillion) is Erfworld. It has been going on for ages and the amount of foreshadowing in every chapter is staggering. The attention to detail, the way every single thing in a page is important, and the fact that you’re usually right if you see something and wonder “is this important?” is mind-boggling. And the best part is that most of the twists are STILL unexpected. Or, if they’re expected, they’re still deeply satisfying. The characters are amazing and I’ve never been more hooked on a story and the characters taking part in it for as long as I can remember.
Helpful Tips
Like I mentioned above, creating a list of the reasons I write is super helpful for me when I’m having a difficult time staying focused over a long period of time or when I’m feeling particularly down. You should spend some time to do the same. It can be incredibly helpful as a mental exercise because it will hopefully help you figure out why you’ve decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month. Once you have the answer to that question, pushing through some of the bigger slumps or more difficult days will be easier because your reasons will be clear. If your reasons for writing are “to become inundated in attractive people I am sexually interested in” or “so I can make tons of money and build a bed out of hundred dollar bill” like some kind of nest-based Scrooge McDuck, then you should probably reexamine your choice since neither of those things happen to most writers. I suspect Neil Gaiman could do the former and that J.K. Rowling could do the latter, but both of them write because they love stories. The desire for money or a cadre of beautiful people isn’t really a motive that’ll help you push through a difficult day.
That being said, I’m not gonna judge you if those are your motivations since they might actually help you write. I’d just recommend setting some more reasonable expectations for the results of this month of writing.
NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 9 (11/09)
I bit off more than I could chew yesterday. I got home and tried to focus and write for four hours and got nowhere. I wish I’d just called it after the first hour because I’d have at least done something relaxing with my time. But I just wanted to get it all done like I’d planned. Which is the downside to goals, I guess. Especially big ones like the ones I was throwing around yesterday. It’s important to know the difference between “possible” and “likely.” I leaned too hard on the possible part and paid no attention to how unlikely it was that I’d have the energy and focus to do that much writing after a full day of work and stuff. I probably need more sleep, a bit of actual relaxation, and then I’ll be good to write.
I think the goals are good, I’m just still recovering. So I’m going to dial them back a bit and aim for that. The blog post counts are pretty much going to stay the same since nothing is going to stop me from updating my blog every day, but I probably won’t pre-write all the Tips for the rest of the month. It’s a bit of a pain to try to come up with them at the end of a night of writing, but it’ll still be easier to do that once a day over this weekend than to try to jam out nineteen extra at some point in the next few days. I’ll aim for reaching fifteen thousand words in my National Novel Writing Month project, which is pretty much what I should be writing every day according to the NaNoWriMo thing, and I’ll drop my word count for the romance novel down to six thousand. Sure, I’ll have most of tomorrow afternoon and evening to write since I’m up a few hours at work, but I’ll be busy most of Saturday so I’ve really only got two days to spend on writing. Saturday, like yesterday, will be just about getting as many words done as possible before or after helping my friend move to her new house and then doing the requisite amount of hanging out before I bounce. As much as I’d love to spend some time with my friends, I would also like to get some writing done and rest up for next week. Next week is when I’m going to try to get back to it, hardcore mode.
I say “hardcore” mode like I’m going to step up my game to some new insane level, but that’s kind of the theme of the entire month. I’ve had three good days out of the last eight and I wrote twenty-three thousand words in that time. If I kept up that pace every day and wrote just my NaNoWriMo project, I’d have the whole thing done in a week.
Maybe that’s what I should do. Set aside the romance novel and just do the next forty-two thousand words of my novel over the next seven days (leaving a little room for blog writing), and then swap to my romance novel to do the same. That could work. Except for the fact that I know it won’t since seven-thousand words a day is an unsustainable pace during a work week and I still also want to do my Coldheart and Iron weekly posts, so that’s an extra two or three thousand words. Plus, as I said above, there’s a big difference between “possible” and “likely.”
So let’s just stick to my tame goals and then, when I’m rested, I’ll figure out how to fix up my plans so I can still accomplish all my goals for the month. I know I can still do it. I’ve been off to worse starts than this, percentage-wise. I doubt I’ve ever been this far off on word-counts, though. I should be at about thirty-two thousand words for the month as of the end of yesterday, but I’m only at twenty-seven thousand five hundred. Which isn’t a bad place to be, it’s just behind on all my metrics because I’ve only been consistent about blog posts and I can’t ride that minimum daily count for any longer before it starts to put me way behind. I mean, I’m only five thousand words behind schedule and that’s about five hours of work if I can focus. So who knows, maybe I’ll catch up. I feel pretty far behind, though, so I’m not sure the “projected total” and “actual total” are actually giving me the information a quick analysis says they do.
Okay, I crunched the numbers and everything’s further off. I should be at eight thousand words for my romance novel (at a minimum) and I’m only at two thousand and all those are getting tossed out because I need to fix how I’m writing it. I’m at eight thousand five hundred words in my National Novel Writing Month project and I should be at thirteenth and a third thousand words. So I’m essentially thirteen thousand words behind my word count totals. Which is about what I’d make up if I’d actually gone with the goals I stated yesterday.
I think that I’m going to keep my more reasonable goals for this weekend and just see where I am when I get there. Maybe I can push for some extra words every day to make up for being behind. An extra thousand every day would catch me up in no time. Four thousand words a day plus blog posts. Doesn’t seem like much when I say it like that, looking at my daily totals from past days, but it’s going to be difficult.
I’m going to take my advice from a few days ago and just focus on non-numeric goals. No time, no word count, just moving down the page and marking off story beats. It’s good advice. I should listen to myself more often. Anyway, I hope your day goes well, that you make good progress today, and that you can find the time to step away long enough to breathe and prepare yourself for the next dive. Good luck!
Daily Prompt
Unless you’re trying to write period literature based on stories from over one thousand years ago (if you are, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you let me know because I live stories from back then), your characters are probably going to grow and change. Maybe the entire story is about your protagonist growing and changing. Whatever part of the story it is, growth is important to show. For today, write a scene showing your protagonist growing. You could show them reflecting on a time when they would have made a difference choice or you could even show them growing by having them change the way they’re responding to whatever situation is causing their growth. It can be as little or as big as you want, but show it to us, don’t just tell us about it.
Sharing Inspiration
Sometimes, you just need to have an uncomplicated fun time. Most people don’t really think of Twitter when they think of places they can go for a fun time, especially considering how many nazis infest the platform these days. But me? I go check out #BadBookIdeas. Two of my Twitter friends are responsible for the resurging popularity of the hashtag and they occasionally have duels that always result in a spike of people Tweeting. It’s a great place to go for ideas. You shouldn’t use the ideas other people are posting because that’s kind of rude, but they have pun titles usually and they do a great job of getting you thinking about quick little stories. Participating is also great practice for coming up with stories ideas for your own use, so check it out and try it out!
Helpful Tips
Take some time away from your screen, typewriter, or notebook. Walks are great, but sometimes you just need to center yourself. Your mind needs to be tidied up every so often, just like the place you live, and the best way to do that is some kind of non-specific writing or expression. Maybe have an open-ended philosophical discussion with your friends. Maybe draw something or make some non-word based art. Maybe write a poem. Maybe do a little writing in your journal. Maybe meditate. You’ve got a lot of options and I’m sure you know which will work best for you. Don’t continue to push yourself when the words won’t come. Take a break, tidy up, and get your mind in order. This doesn’t mean play video games, read, or watch TV. You need to take the time to intentionally order your mind. Get things out of it. Put some of it away. All of that. It’s not always easy and it’s not always possible, but there’s usually benefit to it. I’m planning to do a bunch of it after I leave work today since I’ve been putting it off all week. I’m going to make a phone call, have a good cry about this week, and then clean up my mind. Maybe then I’ll actually be able to write what happened in my life.
Anyway, this is a bit beside the point. Take the time to reflect on what’s in your head because that’s where the stories come from. You need to clean it up and care for it if you want to keep producing. Sometimes that means not accomplishing the goals you set for yourself, but that’s okay. Your mind is your best tool and it’ll work better once you’ve put some work into caring for it.