I’m Still Alive

Hello, everyone!

NaNoWriMo is at the halfway point, so I thought I’d pause for a moment and let you know how I’m doing and what I’m working on. I am still breathing, so that’s good. 🙂 Before I get into what’s been going on, let me update you on what to expect from me for the rest of the year. 

I tend to be a bit obsessive…as you can probably tell by the rate my stories have been updated in the past. Having to spend so much time on one thing in such a short amount of time for NaNo only exacerbates that behavior for me. So, I made a deal with myself to spend limited amounts of time writing the NaNo story. I have specified writing hours that I somewhat adhere to, and I tend to only write one chapter a day so I don’t burn myself out because of the obsession. Problem is, I often still feel like writing after I’m done writing my one chapter! What have I done about it? Well! You’re gonna love this. I’ve been writing SimLit! (cue the band) I have the entire Pruett rotation done and ready to do. (drop the confetti) I’ve even written some 3D Pruett chapters even though I’m not supposed to be working on that story right now. I just miss Jonathan and the crew so much! At some point, I’ll play through the Jones rotation and get those written. I need time to edit the Pruett rotation, so I won’t begin posting on December 1. But, somewhere around the beginning of the month you should see something from me. I won’t make any promises for the Jones rotation, but know that it will be in the works soon.

SO! NaNoWriMo! My story is still unnamed. (smh) I am NOT good at naming things. My story is about a journalist who kinda sucks at her job and has struggled with identity issues her whole life. She has always felt different despite her family assuring she is not. A terrible tragedy occurs and simultaneously causes the identity struggle to resurface again, but this time it ends up consuming her life because she discovers a secret her family had been keeping from her, leaving her to wonder who she really is. If that isn’t the most cryptic thing I’ve ever written, I don’t know what is! 😀 I’m still working on how to talk about the story without giving away all the spoilers.

In a way, participating in NaNoWriMo isn’t any different from what I usually do. I am accustomed to spending my nights at this desk typing my life away. Discovering Juliana was well over 100,000 words, and F.I.S.H. was around 65k. The legacy…let’s not even go there LOL. The point is, 50,000 words doesn’t scare me. 50k in 30 days does! I am doing well, though, and am right where I need to be at just a few words shy of 25,000. Thanksgiving is next week, so I might have a little bit of a lull, but there is a whole week after that to catch up so fingers crossed!

There has only been one other time I wrote like mad under pressure of a deadline, and that time was when I learned how to turn off my inner editor. December 2015, I wanted to finish writing the legacy because I knew my time would be limited in January all the way through March. We were so close to the end then, and I didn’t want to put the story on hold for three months. I had about 30 more chapters to write and tried to write as much as possible as quickly as possible. The problem was I wrote much too slow because I couldn’t stop editing while I wrote. It was so frustrating! So, I told myself that, just this once (ha!), I would just write. No editing. No thinking. Just write and move on! If I had time to come back and edit the chapters, great! If not, at least you guys would still get to read it though it might not have been my best work. I did that for a few days and got so many chapters done! And, after a while, I began to enjoy how it felt. It was freeing! After that month was over, it became a habit.

That is the exact way I’m having to write during NaNo, and it makes me laugh because I know what I’m writing is ultra crap. 😀 No, seriously. This isn’t perfectionist Jess crazy talk. The writing is not the best. For example, I’ll write about someone walking into a room or something very quickly, and I’ll say to myself, “Don’t you want to describe what the room looks like or what it feels like in there?” Then I’m like, “NOPE,” and keep writing like mad. 😀 The story is progressing much faster than it needs to, and the chapters are much shorter than they should be. It’s a bunch of crap. 😀 I feel like a mad woman! All I want to do is hit that 50k mark just so I can say I did. I don’t care if the writing is crap or that the story has plot holes as large as Lake Michigan. After the challenge, when I have all the time in the world, I will revisit everything and make it right. 🙂 But, for now, this is me on a nightly basis.

Take care! I’ll be with you again soon!