April Update: Writing is slow, ideas are abundant

I hit a wall this past month. Not just writing. Depression hit hard, so most of my energies have been directed toward doing daily stuff like working and household stuff and feeding myself and sleeping. It's been a struggle.

I was already struggling with writing, though. I didn't talk about it at the last writers group meeting because I was just realizing how depressed I was and I didn't want to talk about it, or anything really. But the biggest thing I'm dealing with as far as writing right now isn't exactly writer's block, or impostor syndrome, although I guess it might be a combo of both. It's just that, when I go to reach for my writing skills when I sit down to write these days, it's just...not there. I have been writing for something like 20 years at this point. But my ability to do it? It is just...gone. I fumble around without a clue as to what I'm doing. It's not even a sluggish feeling. Or a feeling of I don't want to. It's that I LITERALLY CANNOT. It's terrifying.

So I have just been avoiding writing this past month because if I sit down to write one more time and the ability is still gone, I might lose my mind.

This goes beyond wanting to write and not having the time or energy or motivation. It's like reaching for a tool you've had and used often for half of your life, and it not being there anymore.

I don't think this will last. I imagine it'll come back. But I am so scared to even try.

I am at a bit of a loss as far as what to do for May, now. I had hoped to have most of this SP adventure written, so I'd just wrap it up then maybe move to CLC. But now I don't know what to do with myself. Do I try to write SP? Or do I go straight to CLC? Or do I work on something entirely different while I try to screw my writing cap back on? Or maybe I reread MystWatch 1 and see if I can give editing MystWatch 2 editing another crack.

Most of the month I just coasted, not worried about it, but then I made it worse by sitting down and making another 10 year plan. Why do I always do that?? Seriously. Things were going so well this year with my, write two days a week, take it slow, take it easy, don't think beyond this year, just see what you can comfortably do. But then I hit the editing month and was pressuring myself to work almost daily, and then I tried to back off but I was already burning out when this month hit, and then I broke it by thinking about how/when to monetize.

That said, the plan wasn't bad. Of course, I always make these plans when I can't write. Because making plans about writing instead of writing still feels like progress sometimes.

At any rate. As of writing this, it's only April 25. Maybe I'll get my ass in gear and write every day this week to catch up on Camp NaNo. Or maybe I'll just paint instead and consider this a break month.

More importantly, I have got to figure out what I'm doing next month. It's all a big question mark, and that terrifies me.

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It's now April 29, and things are going better. I did determine after writing that last part that I would buckle down and write a little bit every day for the rest of the month. I managed three days in a row on SP, a total of 3300 words. Last night, I spent the evening with my sister, but before I went over there, I did sit down and write a more detailed, concrete outline for the rest of the adventure. I have notes for each scene I need to write, so I should be able to knock it out pretty easily. When I'm able to write better.

It's been rough, writing SP the last few days. I don't feel very funny, so not a lot of humor is making it in. Which is sad. I always look forward to the funny bits. It all seems so forced, so maybe I've ruined it. But it's SP, so maybe that doesn't matter.

My 10 year plan didn't make room for SP at all. And that makes me legitimately sad. I know if I want to write a book a year and edit a book a year (although when I say "edit a book," I actually mean dev edit one book, copy edit one book, and proof one book, and also outline a new book), something will have to give. It just sucks that it would have to be Sally. Those I write for myself and I really enjoy them.

Anyway. After looking at my 10 year plan made me tired, I determined it's still do-able if I wait until I'm 50 to start it. That way, I have eight years to write whatever I want in any order I want. I want to publish MystWatch by 50, so maybe that's just what I do. And anything else I can build up between now and then will be gravy. I may have to back off to one SP a year rather than two, but that's more in line with what I've managed in the past.

Anyway. I have been writing the last four days, so I'm closer to my NaNo goal. And my April goal. Although I guess my original goal was to write the whole adventure. I am halfway, though! I think I can finish it next month then switch over to CLC and knock out some words. Maybe not many. Maybe just a few.

Then my project timeline has me switching back to Mystwatch 2 for June. Ugghhh. I may be ready by that point, though. Or I may be really into CLC and try to finish that entirely before switching to, I dunno. SP 2.5 or editing. I am playing it by ear, although I did seem to have a good sense of my ebb and flow of energies when making the original plan, so I may stick to it, after all.

But yeah. Biggest goal for May is to finish SP 2.4. Any words I add to CLC are bonus words, honestly. I will need to write a lot for CLC at some point, but I want to finish this SP adventure this year. I need to be doing at least one a year, or this series will never end. And as much as I contemplated giving up on her forever...that'll never happen. I'll always go back to her, even if I'm only telling her stories for myself. I am my number one fan, after all.

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 One final thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that, despite struggling with writing, I've been very much in tune with my creative energies. I've brainstormed more than one thing this month. I read over the first Pandemonium novel and got excited about it again. Made more detailed plans for the sequels. I have gone back and read over just about every story idea I've ever had. Read most of my short stories (even read a few kid-friendly ones to Althea, which she loved, although was afraid of the gremlin in Mischief after Midnight, woops). I wrote up some notes for the assassin story I've always toyed with. I wrote notes out for a dream I had. I started a new short story for Althea. I found a few old stories I never finished that I want to work on.

I am in the MOOD to write. I am excited about my stories. The actual act of writing is still tough, though. The words are coming, just slowly. They work better as brainstorms right now. But I'm making slow progress. I may not hit my Camp NaNo goal, but I still feel good about the last few days.

A lot of it is that I've been managing my depression better. That makes everything a little easier. I'm hoping between that and next month being May, I will have a prolific month.

I just don't have enough time in my life to write all the things I wish I could!

March Update: Lots of editing

I forgot that March is also a rough month for me. My mood fluctuates with the shifting weather, which is never consistent.

That said, I feel like I made a fair amount of progress this month. Not on anything I thought I would, but it wasn't a wasted month, that's for sure.

I started with a novel copy edit for one of my writers. That was an intensive, time-consuming project, but it went well and I feel good about it.

But. It had me in a very editing frame of mind. Maybe because of the dev edits then copy edits for two different projects that weren't mine. So, after one writing day trying to work on CLC, where I only managed 650 words before I let myself stop, I switched over to editing.

Yeah, yeah. Past Sara apparently knew better than I gave her credit for. I did need a break. From writing. From CLC. I wrote over 20k on it in two months, and I was getting bored. Which, isn't good when writing. Means readers will likely get bored. But. Either way. Taking a break was good.

I got myself excited for editing Mystwatch 2 by reading Mystwatch 3. Sound strange? It's not. I love that third book. I was going in to do a developmental editing treatment for it, but the truth is, I think structurally, it's solid. There are parts I thought about cutting or rearranging, but once I got in there, I decided everything is where it needs to be, and while I could trim up some spots, I think everything that's there needs to be. Although I will admit that after a month trying to edit book 2, I am starting to doubt my ability to recognize what is needed and isn't needed in my own books. I like all these scenes, all the dialogue. I don't want to cut anything. And each pass it gets bigger.

Anyway. There are things I need to tweak for book 3, don't get me wrong. It has a few things that need addressing in pretty big ways, and I haven't decided what to do about it, yet. But the fixes are more like a handful of lines here and there rather than writing entire new scenes or moving things around.

Which I am still doing with book 2. After about a week poking at book 3, I finally switched to book 2. And ugh. It needs so much work, still.

This will be the...third? Fourth? Fourth time, I think, that I've torn the pieces apart and rearranged them. Some of that is because the plot changes I'm making to book 2 have made it so a lot of other things need tweaking. Fixing the shelf paper as I go, as it were. I also needed to do a lot with my main character's motivation. She's very wishy washy in the current draft. Very reactive. So I made her proactive, and then also reactive to the things she proactively made happen. That sounds confusing, I know. Basically, for the first half of the book, she kind of just let people dictate what she could and couldn't do, and she grumbled about it a lot (very meanly, making her not very likeable). When she finally does something, it doesn't go well, and she goes back to not doing anything. And that happens three times. So I had to give her more action. Yes, she still has to deal with the fallout of her actions. But she's actually taking action. And moping less. And trying harder, honestly.

Anyway. That was a digression. I am making progress there. Slow progress. I beat my head against the wall for a few days, writing a new chapter I thought I needed. It's where I'd stopped my last attempt editing this last year, this new chapter. I spent an entire day trying to write it, after deciding what all needed to go into it. The entire day was pain. Each sentence I wrote, I wondered...is this hard because I don't want to write this, or because I don't need to write it.

Turns out, as a writer, you gotta trust yourself sometimes. It was hard to write because it didn't need to exist. I wasted an entire day coming up with a chapter that I did not need. That was rough. It made me nearly quit the book, again.

But. After giving my brain a break for a day, I sat down and wrote several brainstorming documents worth of, okay, if I don't write this chapter, what do I need to do instead? What parts that I came up with for this new chapter would still be good to include? If I don't put the parts from other chapters I was going to put here don't go here, after all, where do they go?

So I wrote a whole new outline of fixes I need to make for about seven chapters in the middle. Not all of it is big fixes. But I do need to write two new scenes and a montage. In a different place than where I was writing. Ugh.

I also still have to find places for a plotline that...well, should exist but doesn't, considering book 3. Which shouldn't be a lot. Just sentences here and there. And information in places where, before, I was vague.

The hardest part with all of that is making room for the new parts by cutting out some of the old stuff. Especially when it's a funny line or a nice moment. Hell, I had a really lovely scene in the new chapter I wrote that I can't use at all, sadly. But. I think right now, my focus will just be on putting new stuff in. I will worry about cutting stuff on another pass. I'd rather have everything I need and stuff I don't when I sit down to do the next phase of editing than have to write new stuff again.

Although the new stuff I'm adding, while I was uncertain about at first, I think has been really great. I guess we'll see if I still feel that way when I pick this back up again.

Which won't be for a couple of months. I got my editing to-do outline to a good place so I know what needs to happen for at least ten or so chapters. I think the next time I work on this, I'll have to do the same thing for the ten or so chapters after that, once I've got the middle section worked out.

Next month, I'll be working on a Sally Prescott adventure. I've signed up for Camp Nano, and I'm going to try to write the whole adventure. I need about 16k words. I've given myself May for overflow if I don't get there, but May, I go back to CLC. Then June, I will take another crack at editing book 2 of Mystwatch.

I don't know if I can wrap up my book 2 edit in a month. I still have October as a "wrap up projects" month along with Druid Wars 2 outline. So if I need to, I can finish it then. But. Maybe I can. My client did a massive dev edit rewrite in less than a month. And I made a lot of progress on my edit this month, even with spending a week on a copy edit for a client, and a little over a week focused on book 3. So, yeah. Maybe a full month focused on the second book, I'll be able to muddle through to the end. Although June isn't actually a full month, either. I have another copy edit to do for a week, and I'm spending a week traveling. So that really only gives me two weeks, again. I doubt I'll get to the end, then. Or maybe I will, now that I know what I need to do for most of the upcoming chapters. I won't be stuck, this time. I can just sit down and power through my detailed list of edits.

It might still need another editing pass, even after I'm done this one. Once I've got all the pieces in there that I think it needs to make a better story. Then, of course, the polishing begins. That'll take...well, hard to say. I've polished book one so many times, now. I'm not sure it'll ever live up to the polish of that book. But it doesn't have to, I suppose. Someday, maybe I'll hire an actual editor.

All right. This entry got long, devolving into vague details only I understand about my books. But. I think that's a nice change from talking about my 10-year plan. It's nice to talk about craft and stories rather than timelines and products. For now, I am focusing on the creative side. Maybe in a year or two, I'll start to think about the business stuff.

This year, I just want to make sure I can work on writing at least seven days out of the month. So far so good on that one! I spent fourteen days working on Mystwatch edits this month.

Three months of writing and editing so far. I am still doing this! Hope I can keep it up. I think I can. Even when I was "in a fight" with writing this month, I still didn't have any desire to quit. I think that's a good sign.

February Update: Still positive!

Woohoo, I made it through February! February is always a rough month for me, both mentally and physically. Good thing it's the shortest month of the year.

Not only did I make it through, but I achieved my writing goal! Not only did I achieve my writing goal, I surpassed it! I finished out my writing session yesterday with 12k words for February. I did a 2.4k word day yesterday, and I was already almost 2k past my goal at that point. So, yeah. I can do this. One month, I can see it as a fluke. Doing it two months in a row may still be a fluke, but it gives me more confidence that I can do it again. I'm feeling like I have set myself reasonable writing goals, and it feels so dang good when I surpass them!

I officially broke the 80k mark on Chain Letter Choice. I have written the same amount of words I ended NaNo with on that novel. Which feels amazing. The only problem is, I figured this novel would wrap up in around 90k words. I don't think that's going to work out unless I cut some scenes from my outline. Right now, I don't want to cut anything I'd planned. Pacing-wise, these scenes feel important. Also for character development. So, I'm leaving them in. If I decide this novel needs to be cut down to 90k words, I can cut in other places. I'm taking my time getting through the scenes I'm writing rather than rushing through them. It's balancing my need to be a discovery writer (things I don't expect keep popping up) but also my terror that stops me from writing when I don't know what comes next. I'm liking this detailed outline thing. It turns out it's not actually that detailed.

Trouble is, I keep having to revamp it. I'm already a chapter or two off from where I thought I was going to be. So there will be at least a few more chapters than I thought. Which is fine. But again, that means it'll come in closer to 100k or more when all is said and done. I might have to sit down with my outline sometime this month and restructure it. Again. But I'm waiting to see if it's just chapter numbers that are off, or if I have to swap order of POV again. I may need to add a chapter, which actually means adding two, since I'm putting normal human chapters between agent chapters.

Anyway! I'd talked about swapping editing and writing months for March in my update for last month. And I think my plan is to do that. If I can write 8k-10k words more on CLC in March, I should be within 10k-12k of wrapping it up. I had planned on doing Sally Prescott for Camp NaNo, but I'm reluctant to abandon CLC so close to the end. I do not see myself writing 20k in March, so I'll have to decide if I am going to take a break from CLC for SP, or if I'm going to punt SP down another month or two. Or maybe I just write one SP this year. I know I need to write two per year to get them all done before I turn 50, but I don't think I've ever managed two complete SP adventures in one year. One and a half, maybe. But two this year might be unrealistic, since this is my first year getting back into more frequent writing.

I'll give it some more thought once I get to the end of March, but maybe I can work on finishing CLC through April, work on SP in May, then take my editing break in June. By June, I will need a writing break. I scheduled in a writing break for March because I figured after two months of writing more than I had a month in awhile, I'd need a break. But I feel good! I feel confident and excited about my novel. I'd love to wrap it up before moving on to another project, if possible.

So, yeah. That's been my progress, and those are my goals. I'm really doing this. It's going well, and I'm so happy about it. I even did the novel dev edit for one of my writers and a complete edit for the novella for my other author. And I still got my own writing done. I made an effort to guard my writing days, and it worked. I got things back to my authors closer to the deadlines I'd given myself rather than early like I prefer, but I think that's okay. Good, even.

Editing for other people definitely has me thinking harder about my own writing. I know I'm still writing for myself, at this point, but some of the things I'm telling my writers echo through my head as I'm writing. Is this scene doing more than one thing? What is it showing? Does another scene do this better? It's helped me hone in on what I want each scene to do. Not only advance the plot, but reveal characterization and advance character relationships.

Anyway. Tomorrow is our monthly meeting, so no writing again until this weekend. I've thought of a couple of things I might want to tweak in what I just wrote, and also about how I can maybe cut parts of my outline. Maybe I'll do that this week, since I'm not writing until this weekend. But we'll see. Maybe I'll just keep moving forward rather than looking back.

Either way, the last two months have shown I can do this. I am doing this!