December Update: 2019 Achievements and the Uncertain Path Ahead

For some reason, I thought I'd already written a December post. Woops. Guess I should do that, now.

So, NaNoWriMo was a bust. I never even made it to any write-ins. I went to some of the non-writing events, but I stayed out of the Discord completely except for the midnight kickoff, and I stopped checking in on the forums after the second week. I swore the event off completely on the 20th when they announced validating wasn't going to be a thing, revealing they'd done nothing but lie and miscommunicate with MLs and users the whole flipping month (and much of the month before that). The NaNO HQ staff totally ruined the event for me, which sucked, since I'd already been struggling with writing so much. I mean, if it had been like every other year, it still might not have rekindled my love for writing. But as it was, I stopped writing after the first week, and all of my good feelings toward NaNo soured shortly after that. It's unlikely I'll ever go back, if I'm honest. And while some of that is due to my struggle with writing these days, a lot of that is I think it's time to move on from NaNo.

Some of my quitting last month was because my novel idea took a turn I wasn't ready to follow after. I think it's going to be a cool world, but it's not something I'm interesting in writing about right now.

Although to be fair to the novel, I'm not really interested in writing about much of anything right now.

At any rate, between the 5k words I wrote on the novel and another 2k words I wrote brainstorming a dream, I ended up with a little over 7k for the month. Which is more words than I've written in a single month since May. I wrote almost 5k in June, but not much more than 5k total in the months between June and November. So. I wrote some words, finally. More than just brainstorming words, too. Yay.

Trouble is, I still have no love, excitement, or passion about writing. I didn't enjoy writing any of those seven thousand words. It was perfunctory. Like a chore. Something I felt like I was supposed to do. I think I mentioned that last entry (I only wrote one other day after that post aside from the 2k brainstorming day on the 19th), and that never really changed.

So, yeah. I'm still not in the right mindset to write. I did get a little excited as I read back through this year's blog posts, though. I made some pretty awesome progress those first several months.

This progress should be noted, as this is, essentially, my year-end post.

In 2019, I:

• Wrote nearly 60,000 words over the course of the year
• Finished final edits on Druid Wars and queried 50 agents
• Edited MystWatch book 3 and sent it out to beta readers
• Wrote an entire Sally Prescott adventure and started on the next one
• Wrote over 10,000 words on Chain Letter Choice and outlined the rest of the book
• Brainstormed on ideas for EIGHT new stories/books (wow!)
• Started writing a new sci-fi novel for National Novel Writing Month
• Wrote a story (and a half) for the Confabulator Cafe and kept it running for its last year
• Beta read one novel and several short stories for writing friends
• Finished Masterclasses from Neil Gaiman, Judy Blume, and James Patterson
• Went to Murdercon in North Carolina with Rachel and learned a ton of cool stuff

I mean, for breaking up with writing, this year, I did pretty damn well. I know 60k words isn't a ton, but I edited two novels and queried a book. I also did Masterclasses and a convention to learn more, as well.

There's one or two things I might try to do in the next two weeks, but we're approaching holiday crazy time, so I don't hold out much hope. I'd really like to finish the Cafe story I was supposed to post in October. And I'd like to send Druid Wars to my brother and sister for Christmas. And I definitely need to write a "Cafe is Closed" post for the Confabulator Cafe.

And then I head into next year. I don't know what next year brings as far as writing, yet. I've given myself permission to not write for as long as I need to. And I'm enjoying doing other things.

But I miss being a writer, sometimes. I miss making plans, updating my progress, and, if I'm honest, getting lost in my imagination. There's a lot of baggage associated with being a writer, and I don't miss that stuff. But I miss being a writer at a very fundamental level. We'll see if I can get back there. It may take some more time, and it might take scrapping everything I've ever written and starting fresh. I'm not sure.

I do know that I'm planning on starting a new blog to talk about my journey toward homesteading and self-reliance. I'm not sure how much I'll update there. And I really don't know how much I'm going to update here.

We'll see how I feel in January, but I'll probably still try to check in here once a month. It is the last year before this blog reaches the end of the 10-year journey. So I should keep it alive for at least the last year of my 30s.

Talk to you again when I'm 39. Happy holidays, and a joyous and safe New Year to you.