Nano-Wrangle: Week 4

Greetings, friends!

Well, this week… this week has been a bit of a disaster writing-wise.

In total fairness, I’m amazed we made it this fair before things properly fell apart; it’s certainly been further than I’ve made it before.

Now, don’t worry, I haven’t given up really, I promise! Just… Things haven’t been as productive as they were in previous days:

I think it might be time to admit that November is just a spectacularly bad time for me to try doing Nano at all: busiest time of the year work-wise, body struggling with the early nightfall, and nowadays the added time pressure of outfitting the panto too. It’s just getting to be too much, and the stress is doing dreadful things to what writing I have managed.

People who know more about Nano than I do; is it true that there is another version in springtime? Or that you can just set a couple of dates and let the website chivy you along under normal times? Because the whole running tally and chart thing has proven to be very encouraging for me, it’s just fighting a losing battle against the forces of … November-ness. That’s a real word now, I say so!

And in keeping with helping me not feel like a total failure, the week did bring me another badge! Very motivating things, badges…

So that’s something, isn’t it? If nothing else, I’m gaining a lot of practice in learning persistence and not giving up just because I’m busy…

In terms of what’s actually being written, I regret to say that for all the discipline I’m gaining from this month, I’m also gaining a realisation of how much I didn’t know I didn’t know abotu the story I wanted to tell! Maybe I’ve run into a problem which many pantsers I have told me happens to them: that they plan it all out and their brains decide that they’ve now told the story and refuse to go back to it? Maybe I just hadn’t planned and developed out my characters as real people as much as I should have? Maybe I just need to try a different story for a bit?

That said, maybe the problem is that I’ve bitten off more than I coudl chew this month and didn’t have the sense to pack anything in, trying instead to do it all. I’m exhausted and taking my crankiness out on my book, which  is certainly better than taking it out on other people, but sadly you can’t publish people either!

Come December I’ll focus on other things, I think. There’s some posts for here that I’ve been holding onto in the background, so maybe that’s the ‘Something Completely Different’ that I’ll turn to instead? Because I do certainly want to keep up the writing momentum, but I think by the 30th Novemeber I’ll be ready to throw the book draft out of the window!

Until then, however, we keep making what progress we can!

Until next time…

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