Hitting the Wall

For the last month I have taken time away from adding words to the novel I started last spring. The holiday season has clouded my ability to focus when I sit down and write. I gave myself a break and focused on day to day mom/wife/household responsibilities. Now that Christmas has passed, I feel ready to pick up where I left off on my story. 

I have come to a point in this writing journey where I need to add public goals to my work. So here they are, in no particular order: 

A. Finish the first draft of this story by the end of February 2019 

B. Have my draft edited and revised

C. Shop for a writing agent or begin the self publishing process 

D. Complete a daily very short story (VSS) on twitter for the month of January 

E. Begin writing out my memoirs/life story to give to my children when they are grown 

There they are. Five writing goals for the upcoming year. As of now, these goals seem slightly lofty, but attainable. I hope I can look back on this in a year and realize I exceeded all of these in ways I could not imagine today. 

Roller Coaster

This year was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo. My goal was to get my first draft to 50,000 words. I ended up with 39,000 words, and I am proud of each word. It was difficult to carve out a section of time to write each day, especially around the Thanksgiving holiday. I got through some critical plot points, and added details to minor characters to give depth to their personalities.

Last May I began expanding a short story, which has turned into a novel. My highest monthly word count prior to November was 9,000 words. Even though I did not hit the 50,000 word goal this year, I did substantially exceed my monthly word count. I am in a rough patch now. My creative reserves are low, and I’m fighting off thoughts of worthlessness. I am not sure what’s triggered this episode, but I’ve had enough times like this to know that if I wait it out things will come back around. 

It is peculiar to go through the process of writing out a novel. I have no clue where this journey will take me. If I could tell the youngest version of myself that one day I will begin to write a sci-fi story, I would have laughed. The longest piece of writing other than this was writing out the first three chapters of a thesis for school. That assignment was 10,000 words. A year ago 10,000 words was intimidating. Six months ago 10,000 words was still intimidating, but it was a word count I wanted to surpass. Five months ago I exceeded 10,000 words. Now I am at 40,000 words. 

This process has been a wilder roller coaster than I anticipated. I am determined to get this draft finished and see it through edits. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought about jumping off mid ride. During those moments, I choose to put the story away for a few days and take time to recharge. 

Does anyone have any advice or kind words to share? I would appreciate some encouragement in the comments.