week 2 - NaNoWriMo

This may be the week that keeps me from winning NaNoWriMo. And it's kind of killing me.

I felt great about catching up on Tuesday. When I went to bed I was a hair below 20,000 words. I knew that Wednesday would be tough because it was going to be a 12-14 hour day at work. I knew I'd get home at 9 PM at the earliest. I hoped I'd have the energy to write. I did not. As with most events where I have to be Super Me, I was wiped out. I went to bed, knowing that I'd have day two of being Super Me on Thursday. I hoped that since it would end much earlier, and I'd likely be home by 6-ish, I'd be able to catch up. Instead, I was wiped out, and felt completely sapped of creative energy. Actually, I felt sapped of ANY energy. And I could feel the snarly little tendrils of depression begin to creep in.

By Friday I was fully engulfed. Today I either numbed out or laid in bed in my darkened room, occasionally weeping for no good damned reason that I could name. At one point, I was recalling times I felt I'd failed my children as a mother. My brain was in deep search of memories that would support the biochemical wonk going down. My litany is like so:

• Simply Red – Money's Too Tight [To Mention] (and it is, and I'm serious, my cupboard is bare and we've eaten all the things you only eat when you're desperate)
• Tracy Bonham – Mother Mother (because I'm worried to death about my kid in Portland, see lack of funding and other joys)
• Danger Mouse – Dark Night Of The Soul - Feat. David Lynch (because I'm having one, and it's freaking my shit out)
• Little Comets – A Little Opus (actually writing a book is a BFD to me, one deeply tied to my identity and doing it, even as a shitty first draft is seriously messing with me)
• Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun (as much as I love the rain and fog, I now know without a doubt that I have SAD and that and my Oregon allergies are making ME sad)
• The Dresden Dolls – The Perfect Fit (just work anxiety and generally falling apart and feeling inadequate angst)
• Everclear – Everything To Everyone (because this month I also decided to try to be a GS leader and all the other things)

I could go on. I won't. I'm trying to take care of myself, to honor where I am and what I'm struggling with, to make some GD room for life happening the way it really is happening, rather than how I want it to be happening. Maybe I can give myself another month to finish my book. Maybe I won't win NaNoWriMo this year. Maybe that's okay. Maybe it's not. Honestly, I'm too dark to even care right now. So I'll go read and huddle under the covers and eventually this will past. Has to. Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence

week 1.5 NaNoWriMo

I ended the week, as did many other WriMos with a writing marathon. And like most marathons, turns out training matters. Training in this case being less about miles run and more about words written.  There were two days this week that I didn't write. That, plus a misreading of a word count calendar I have left me short, even after the marathon. Because why? Because I didn't do a good job training and I suck at anything that looks like math. Yeah, sue me. Figuring out the stats to finish NaNo on time looks like math to me.

The first day I didn't write was Tuesday. My partner fell and hit his elbow first thing in the morning while accompanying our sprog to the bus stop. He (my partner, not the sprog) is on a blood thinner because he had a heart valve replaced a few years back. He was the first guy in Arizona to have it done robotically. It was in the news and shit. If you're particularly good with Google, you might be able to track him down. Anyway, bruises are bad news for him because of the blood thinners. About midway through the morning, I texted him to see how he was doing. He said there was swelling. He is a notorious under-reporter, so I demanded that he bring his elbow to my office so I could judge for myself whether a trip to the ER was in order. He brought it, tried to hide it, but ultimately revealed what looked like a second elbow growing adjacent to the first. It was truly gruesome. I - not a fan of shows with graphic surgery, despite my horror fandom - could not look at it for long. We went to the ER.

At the ER, we generally made the nursing staff uncomfortable while waiting for the doc. Aside from the truly grotesque image of the elbow itself, once they found out he was on coumadin and that he - such a cliche here - hadn't been to the doctor as he should have been in months, they kinda freaked out. It didn't help that he raised his arm to try to relieve the pressure and a great gout of blood came shooting out of his elbow. This happened while only the two of us were in the room, and I swear to you, it looked like the worst special effect ever. The blood jetted out as if someone hid a smallish garden hose next to his arm. I thought it looked vaguely arterial and panicked in the somewhat British way that I do (though I'm not at all British), which is to say I calmly walked out into the hallway and said, "There's a great deal of blood on the floor - can you please come check this out?" By the time they got in there (seconds), it was done bleeding because rather than being arterial bleeding, it had been more like a giant blood-filled zit popping. The weird swelling on his elbow was gone, leaving behind normal looking damage from the fall.

The doc came in and explained it all in doctorly terms, made an appointment for the partner with a cardiologist (I cheered), tested his coumadin-levels and proclaimed it safe for him to go home. The whole ordeal took around 4 hours. We came home, made him comfortable, cooked dinner... and I could have written. I really could have. He was okay. We were okay. But I just didn't have it in me. I went to bed early.

That was the first "training" error of the week. I should have at least got in 1000 words, which takes me about 30 minutes. Seems that's kind of like skipping a training run. My second error came the next day when I only did about 1100 words. I should have done more, but I claimed difficulty getting the hang of working a full day and then coming home to write. This is like cutting miles from your run when you should be ramping up.

My third error was not writing on Friday. I had no reason. I just came home from work, decided to have a glass of wine (or two. Okay, I had three. Have you seen how big my wine glass is?) with the fam and relax. We had cable again. I played WoW. This was the most egregious sin of all. I could have made up for the earlier day off quite handily here. The reason I didn't was that I looked at the word count calendar, mistook the weekly total for the total total and thought I only needed to write 2500 words to be on track for the week.

Oh fuck.

I was so proud.

I would like to state for the record that I made this miscalculation BEFORE I drank the wine. I can't blame being drunk. I just suck at math. And even though the calendar even has nice little blocks to help the numerically challenged such as myself, I'm not much better at spatial intelligence. Ask the hubs, who regularly has to do all the packing because when I do it, we use twice as many boxes and need three times as much room on the moving vehicle.

So I took my damned time on Saturday morning, which was the day of the NaNoThon, a day designed for catching up.  I slept in. Why not? I only had to write 2500 words. And if I ended up writing more, that would be okay, but not necessary to my goal because I thought I was on track. When I finished at 2710, it was like I finished my race with a PR.

And then I looked a little more closely at the stupid calendar. (Don't bother pointing out that I'm the stupid one here - I know. It's a defense mechanism.) This was about 11-ish last night. I looked. And then I looked again. What I'd thought was the overall count was the weekly count. I wasn't ahead. I was behind. I couldn't even tweet. I didn't have the umph even for that little thing. I just closed my laptop and went to bed, but not before I did the math (correctly this time) that told me I'd have to put out about 3700 words today to be on track.

Lost it.

Did I already say oh fuck? Let me say it again. Oh fuck. With an illustration. This combo of disasters was like getting stupid drunk and eating crap the night before a race, then running the race with a broken watch and thinking that just because you finished while breathing, it was a personal record when in fact you were about twice as slow as usual.

Today I have on tap a meeting with my local writer friend. That's in about two hours. I choose to write this instead of starting on the mountain of words I have today. Yesterday I saw people posting word counts in the 10,000 - 20,000 range. A few were even higher. I have to keep reminding myself of last week's lesson. No comparing. And I find myself wanting to think nasty (defensive) things like, "Well what kind of quality could those words be?"

But that's the freaking point, Mo. It's not about the quality, it's about getting them out. (This is what I imagine you, dear reader, saying right now.) And also (you're still talking), it doesn't matter how many more someone else does. Just stick with YOUR method.

So I'll go to my meeting and enjoy it. I'll come home and do my best to come close to 3700 words. That's about a chapter. I can pull that off. I think. Tomorrow a friend is coming from Portland. That will eat up several hours of the day, so I can't rely on that as my time to make up word count. I'll try to set it up so I can move back towards the 1700 words per day goal. I think I can keep that up during the week. Think. Sorry Yoda, but here, there IS try, and if I'm lucky, do.

Good thing I'm not a Jedi.

lessons from 3 days of NaNoWriMo

The number one thing I know? Committing to do something without any accountability (other than what I set for myself) is harder than doing it because I paid for a class. The number two thing? I am a PRO at productive procrastination. There is nowhere the dishes can hide, no dust that can escape the broom. Friend or family member has a problem? Well I am THERE and it is then JUSTIFIED productive procrastination. The intarwebs have never been so well read, my Facebook status has never been so well attended. And now is the perfect time, of course, to add a little daily exercise and home cooking to the mix. Why the hell not? Productive procrastination. I am an expert.

Still, I have managed to stay above the line for the daily average, meaning I'm not setting myself up to have to do some crazy amount of writing in one day, and I think that is a good thing for me. Otherwise it would be so easy to just hang it up till next year (again).

I am fighting, on a daily basis - hell, on an HOURLY basis - the certain knowledge that I'm a mediocre writer, my work is neither scary enough or funny enough, and I am convinced, CONVINCED, that everyone else is brilliant on their first draft. Giving myself permission to write a shitty first draft in no way really makes it okay to my inner editor, who can only be silenced by alcohol, and I just ain't doin' that. The battle feels Herculean, like a life battle, like a fight for my soul and I can see how some people feel that doing something like this is a spiritual undertaking.

The writing, to date, is halting or in fits and bursts. It is nowhere near as smooth as my essay writing. It is work. But 2013 is my year of doing the things I've always said I want to do, dammit, and this is not going to break me. I will finish.

I do fear I will finish and then, in the post-partum blues stage I will convince myself that I was never meant to write fiction. How do people deal with the next month, when the editing starts? Do NaNoWriMo groups stay in touch? Do they workshop? Do they pick up the pieces of broken dreams and egos? Ah, the last is probably too much to ask. But I do have some anxiety around it.

It was nice to end my first week with this:

But can I do it a second week? With work kicking in tomorrow? Oi... why can't I ever take the blue pill?