Sunday, November 6, 2022

Update and NaNoWriMo 2022

 Morning, been a while, and I do have an explanation. 

So last year, I did actually participate in NaNoWriMo. I didn't post that here because I felt like I wasn't gonna make it. 


And hey, look at that, I didn't. 


I felt kind of dejected, honestly, and didn't want to post a failure.

I was also just not happy with the story. It wasn't awful, an intrigue murder mystery at a school for the arcane, but I was just struggling to find the progression every day in a way that I wasn't struggling with Fight or Flight and Bound. Each time I opened the doc I found myself fighting to keep any semblance of pace and not really knowing where I wanted the story to go. In the end I had a story I was not proud of and came way... way short of making NaNoWriMo. 

I could blame my work, I was at a new job at the time. Clearly that massive change in my life made it hard to sit down and write! But no... My new job has a lot of downtime, a lot of opportunity to sit and write *at work.* Hell I even had a desk and a computer to work at so I wouldn't have to haunch over my tablet to bang out a couple hundred words during my lunch break. So no, it wasn't my work. It was just lack of motivation, which is always my problem. The self imposed obligation of doing a NaNoWriMo was what got me to 50k with Bound and Fight or Flight last time, but it didn't manage to get it's hooks in me last year. 

So I'm not participating this year. The same thing will inevitably happen, I can feel that it will. I don't have a good story idea in my head right now and I don't want to force it like I did last time. So I'll sit this year out and do my best to actually hit the ground running next year. 


But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be writing. I'm still clearly struggling to find motivation to sit and write when it's not NaNoWriMo, when I don't have an (arbitrary) obligation to sit and write hanging over my head. I have to work on that. Need to figure something out. I need to write because it's something I enjoy doing... which I do. I love writing. It's just getting it into my routine that I struggle with.


And hey look I have three unfinished projects to get to work at. By end of year I want to have finished Bound (there's only really the final fight and wrap up to do there) and get back in to Fight or Flight. If I can finish both by years end even better, and I'll look into making that third project, Faces in the Crowd, my New Years Project.


Expect updates soon... Not every day, I imagine, but once I have something I'll post it.