August Update: A needed (if not wanted) break

This will be a short update. I did not write in August.

There. That's the update.

Although me being me, obviously I have more to say about it than that. Mostly that I didn't necessarily want or plan to take a break this month. Especially with last month being a kind-of break. But, as it turns out, I did manage to burn myself out a bit, I think, with even the casual goals I made.

Or I guess burnout isn't necessarily accurate. I just...don't want to write right now. Every time I settled down to write in July, it felt bad. This month, just thinking about writing felt bad. I felt loathing and disgust for all of my stories. None of my worlds were interesting. All of my characters were annoying. And I just didn't care what happened to any of them.

That realization hit about midway through the month, and rather than trying to salvage it, I just checked in with myself a few times to see if I felt differently. I never did, so I finally let it go.

I don't know what happened. I don't know if the month of August's energy is just off, or if it has to do with the moon or my energy level or what I've been reading lately. Or if it's just like every hobby that ebbs and flows.

Because as much as I have illusions of making money writing someday in retirement, the honest to goodness truth is that writing has become a hobby. And my hobbies I tend to pick up and put down as the mood strikes me.

As a hobby, there's a lot of "oh, I should do this thing," and then not doing it, then kind of shrugging of shoulders and realizing I didn't really want to do it that badly to begin with if I didn't make time for it. There's really no reason to push myself harder than that now that writing is only a hobby.

It is true that I have things I want to get finished. I have novels I want to finish, series I want to finish. And I have new things I want to start. But there are only so many hours in a day and I have a finite amount of energy. The last month, I've been focused on getting myself outside, moving my body, trying to find a balance of the things I consume. I spent a lot of this year fighting depression, and now that I'm connecting with nature again, that has subsided. I only cried for about ten seconds on Mom's birthday yesterday, and was only sad for about an hour.

I don't by any means believe I am done writing. The desire to return to my worlds and my characters and tell their stories will come back. It always does. But I don't want to force it. There's just no reason. My life is shifting focus. I just got a big raise at work, so I'm committed to seeing this through til retirement. I have savings plans in place to make sure I don't have to work in retirement unless I want to. I had thought about putting aside freelance money to fund the self-publishing of Mystwatch. But right now, I'd rather put that money toward other goals.

So, yeah. As of right now, this last day of August, I haven't written for over a month, and I feel okay about it. I may give it more of a shot in September. But I do have another freelance project coming, so I may focus on that instead.

At the very least, I will probably do some thinking and some shifting of my schedule to see what all I can still commit to finishing this year. Mystwatch 2 is definitely off the table. I just need to decide between CLC and SP. And then decide what my plan is for November. Whether I actually do NaNo or not. Or a half NaNo.

I will let y'all know how September turns out. Hopefully with more words written than the last two months combined! Take care, and have a great month.

July Update: Rest and (hopefully) Rejuvenation

I had big ambitions for July. I wanted to write something like 12k and finish writing Chain Letter Choice.

Instead, I busted my ass finishing Lisa's copy edit, and then devolved into zero motivation to write.

Truth is, I'm tired. Not physically, really. Mentally and emotionally. I tried to write a few times, but after a big push early in the month (before I dove too deeply into copy edits), words became a struggle. I am not sure if it's because the scene is hard or if I am just not in a writing frame of mind. Either way, whenever I had plans to write the last week, I couldn't quite manage it.

So, with five days left in the month, and two of those where I will be out of town, I've decided to call it. I managed to write 3,500 words on CLC, and for right now, I'm happy with that. No, it's not finished. No, I didn't get 12k or even 8k. But I made progress. That's all I can really ask of myself, especially when I'm this...antsy? About writing.

I'm feeling a little down about the trajectory of my writing "career" these days. Watching Lisa and her success is both motivating and exhausting. I admire her hard work and drive, but I do not have that in me. I'm not even sure I want to. Which brings me back around to, I'm writing because I want to tell these stories and finish things I've started. Which...isn't always motivating to get work done when I don't feel like it and have twelve other things I should be doing.

I would still like to finish CLC this year. Maybe I'll manage it in August. If not, I'll put off the next SP adventure and push through in September and into October, if I need to. I think finishing this is more important than the next SP. And probably even more important than Mystwatch 2. Yes, I took book 2 apart and need to put it back together again, but what's the rush? Right now, if I go back to Mystwatch, I kinda want to work on the first Shane novel. Novella? I'm not sure yet. I just cannot get excited about book 2. I've never been particularly excited about it. And honestly, the longer I wait to work it out, the more experience I will have fixing structural issues with books. I don't want to have to take it apart and put it back together again, so I need to be sure to do it right this time, if I can.

Anyway. Yeah. Chain Letter Choice is my priority for the rest of the year. And...I think...I might spend some of October brainstorming for Druid Wars 2. So that I can give it a go in November. So I can spend a few months next year wrapping that up, rather than spending the whole damn year writing it.

If I do that, I'll have more time for SP and maybe even edits for Mystwatch 2 in 2023.

As much as I'd love to get everything I'd planned on doing this year done, I know it's not going to happen. So now I need to decide where my focus should be. And I think I'd rather do Druid Wars, a world and characters I know, then starting a whole new world I still know nothing about for NaNo. I honestly believe I might need to step it back a notch, the number of projects per year, so I have down time to think and brainstorm and, honestly, rest.

Because Lisa is planning on putting out three books a year for awhile. At least this year and next. And if Rachel does even one or two books, that's something like five months out of the year I won't have time or maybe energy to write. I've decided the freelance editing takes precedence. For now. For the money. For the experience. For the time for me to really think about what it is I want out of writing.

Right now, I want to keep writing so I have something to talk about with my friends. And that's...not a great reason. I also want to finish things, which is a slightly better reason.

I guess another reason, one I lose sight of sometimes, is that I love having written. Turning a sentence from an outline into an emotional scene is just magical. Reading something I've read and laughing because I left myself a joke is amazing. And crying because I put to words a thought or feeling that is really powerful is, quite frankly, more rewarding than I can express.

So yeah. Those are the main reasons I write. That's good to remember. But it's also good to remember that sometimes, when I'm tired and spread too thin and putting too much pressure on myself to do All The Things, I lose those moments. Or at least don't take as much joy in them.

So. Yes. Camp NaNo was a bust. That may not bode well for NaNo proper. But I like to think by letting myself off easy this month, November will be easier. I don't want to go into NaNo exhausted. I need to be rested and excited and motivated. And I will do what I can in the months leading up to it to ensure that happens.

Next month, hopefully I have an update with more actual progress. But it's August. So we'll see if I hide in writing, or avoid writing entirely. I'd be happy with a healthy balance between those two things!

June Update: Halfway through the year!

It always cracks me up when I go back and read my previous month's update and plans and compare it to what actually happened.

June has been a crazy, busy, unpredictable month, as, erm, predicted. But. Writing things went a little differently than I thought they would.

First, my vacation plans fell through. Or rather, I bailed on them. It's a long story that I won't go into here, but rather than going to MN, I came home. And for a few days I did nothing but rest. Mentally and physically. And then, I started on the dev edit. The dev edit that came a week late, so I did not get to do it before my trip.

Which worked out. I wouldn't have wanted to be finalizing it on the last day before I left, as most of that day was spent shopping and packing. And after having the days to rest, I was able to come at it feeling refreshed. I got a really solid edit done in less than a week and got it back to her almost a week early.

And I won't be getting it back until today!

So that left me with about two weeks to work on my own stuff.

I wasn't confident that I'd be able to get into Mystwatch and do my edit in that amount of time, so I sat down with my project schedule, and did some rearranging. As of right now, my plan is to have CLC finished by the end of July's session of Camp NaNo. Once that is finally off my plate, fitting in writing words around my freelance editing project in June and July, I will have the mental capacity to go after Mystwatch 2 edits again. I'm giving it one month. August. My, erm, shittiest month. But. I've decided that I don't actually have to get that edit done this year. There's no penalty, so if I make decent headway on it in August, I can leave the rest of the edit for another time. I'm okay with that, right now. And then I have September and October to write the next SP adventure, then NaNo for my new project, and December to outline Druid Wars 2.

Phew!

So, looking at the two weeks I had in June, I was like, this new timeline is ambitions. And hell, that's two weeks I didn't think I was going to have free. I should be able to write my normal monthly goal of 8k in that amount of time if I buckle down.

Hahahahaha.

Oh, Sara. When will you learn.

But I did learn. I learned very quickly that was ridiculous. So I scaled it back. Told myself to aim for 4.5k. As long as I didn't have to write more than 15k words in July, I could afford to write fewer than 8k words in June.

It's going to be tight, and I'm still not sure I can wrap CLC up by 100k. But. I ended up writing 6k words on it this month. That puts me at 87k. So that leaves 13k for July. I'll probably aim for 12k, because July is a busy month, too. With the copy edit and both Althea's and Violet's birthdays. And, y'know. The 4th.

Blah blah blah, boring number stuff.

I am quickly nearing the end, in more exciting plot-related stuff. I've got a few key scenes left, and the downtime that goes between them, then I'm done. I'm starting to really believe I can finish this book this year. I wasn't sure when I started into this year what all I'd be able to accomplish. Turns out, quite a lot. If I can, in fact, finish this, and knock out one more SP story...I'll have finished a novel that's been outstanding for a few years as well as wrapping up season 2 of SP. That is huge. Even more huge if I finish the Mystwatch 2 book edit.

But there's no penalty if I don't manage it. I'm seeing what I am capable of if I go slow and listen to myself. I'm feeling this out so that I can fall into a routine that will sustain me until retirement. Or at least until I'm 50. I can decide what to do with my back catalogue at that point, if anything. And if I am a SP adventure or a book or two short, no worries. I either take another year or push myself to work faster.

My biggest goal this year is to see what I can do, how much I can do, consistently, and avoid burning myself out.

A big component of that is going to be NaNo. Can I do NaNo and not burn out? If I don't do NaNo, can I finish books? Although for that one, I already know I can, since I think Myswatch 3, I started and ended outside of NaNo and only ever managed 1600 words in NaNo proper...although looks like maybe 35k during Camp NaNo sessions.

I won't lie. I like the idea of spending October planning out a novel, November writing 50k of it, and then the next year spending a few months finishing it up. But maybe I can't do that. Maybe I just take a year to write a whole book, and then take a year editing and writing SP and other stuff. That's what I want to find out. And I can't truly find that out until I get CLC done and Mystwatch edited. I need to pick a project and see it through.

So. Maybe I don't do Druid Wars 2 next year. Maybe I finish whatever NaNo novel I start. And maybe I start writing Druid Wars 2 for NaNo next year and finish it the year after that.

It's only the end of June. Still a lot of wait and see how things go.

That said, I wanted to note that the writing has been fun and fairly easy the past two weeks. I definitely have times of feast and famine with writing. I am much more productive and in the flow in the summer. That's always been the case. By September, I'll be in peak writing mode, I assume. Hopefully I can put it all to good use.

Right now, I'm still working on things I feel comfortable with. It's when I start a totally new project in a totally new world where it's going to get scary and hard.

Or maybe exciting and easy.

Time will tell.

I'm really enjoying this year, seeing what I'm capable of when I just let myself follow my flow.

And, y'know. Learn the difference between I'm not writing because I'm depressed and can't and I'm not writing because the next scene is hard or I can't focus because whatever reason. Been a lot of that the last two weeks, but once I settle in, the focus finally comes.

I am content with my writing journey thus far. It's going really well, and I'm happy. Half a year down. Half a year to go!

And then seven more years until....profit?  :D