A Reason to Keep Writing

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at
Freedigitalphotos.net

I'm in a funk, a writing funk. I don't know why and I'm perturbed. The story was flowing along fine and I hit this wall that forced me to write backward. No, not that kind of backward. I had to go back and write a new beginning so I could move forward at the spot where I hit the wall.

It is all very confusing so I won't bore you with long explanations. Just think of painting a room and finding yourself in a corner with no door or window. In addition, across the room you realize you missed a spot next to the door. You have to walk across the room, painting over your footsteps on the way out, and then repaint the section next to the door. That's as close as I can get.

So, I did that and it helped a bit. But honestly, I don't want to do this. Really. Isn't that the darnedest thing? I want to just toss it out and forget the whole thing. I want to take a long winter's nap and wake up in the spring and go for a walk in the cemetery. I want to feel warm, awake, and alive. {sigh} I put that there because you simply can't write a sigh. I know. I've tried.

Now, here I am on Sunday, the 16th and I'm supposed to be at 26,667, more than halfway through my NaNo novel but I am 23,858. It is a widening gap if you stop writing. I would have caught up yesterday but I was really very tired after the library write-in, where I'd managed to get caught up to Friday's goal. Now, I've missed yesterday's goal and if the trend continues, I'll miss today's.

I don't really know what the problem is and I'm not inclined to delve into it to any great degree. I just want to stop.

Here's the thing. NaNo isn't one to die easily. It goads you and twist your mind inside and out. It calls you in the night, wakes you in the morning, and stares at you across the table, any table. It becomes this siren luring you to your destruction. If you don't write, you'll never escape the memory of it. You'll have another blue dot in your row of purple dots. You'll have a missing year in your certificates. People, NaNo'ers, will shake their heads in pity. "Oh, you didn't win that year? Wow."

Then, if you happen to be the Municipal Liaison... not only do you not win but you face public humiliation as the leader of the group. "OH, YOU didn't win? OH NO!" Yeah, sort of like that. But much worse in person.

So, you keep writing, even if you hate the story. Even if it goes in circles, at least it's moving. By the 30th you hope you've got 50k words and the draft of a good story.  A good story is much harder to come by. Failing that, you hope you have at least 50k words because that Winner's Certificate is more than a piece of paper with pretty designs. It's proof of a lot of gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, wringing of hands, loss of sleep and hours of writing, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone in the dark.

By November 30th, if you pull it off, you'll know what you're made of and you'll wake up on December 1st feeling a bit like a lottery winner, but without the money.

Unless... you know... if I edit this thing, tweak it there, maybe cut this... yeah... you know, maybe... just maybe there's a best seller in this thing.

Day 12 of NaNoWriMo

What a long week and a half this has been. I was lagging behind on word count most of the first week of NaNo but managed to catch up yesterday. If it were not for our write-ins I'd be further behind. My Co-ML had a write-in Friday night at Panera Bread and I went to that. We had 11 people attending. That's the largest we've had in a while.

I've been doing virtual write-ins online with several members of the group and we've combined them so that if there is wifi where we're hosting a live write-in we also do a virtual write-in. Saturday we were at the library and last night I did a write-in at Panera Bread on the east side of town while Tammy was at the library on the west side of town. I'm actually ahead slightly today and don't have as far to go to hit the day's goal of 20,000 words.

I woke to heavy, grey skies and a horrendous headache and pain in a variety of places. Went for blood work and everyone who saw me said, "You're not feeling well today, are you?" I wonder how they knew? I wasn't moaning and groaning or writhing in pain. I carried my Kindle and tried to read while I waited, answered check-in questions, got my blood work. I didn't even have to argue with the lab tech about getting the blood from the back of my hand and what gauge of needle to use! She just agreed and got the butterfly.

It is cold. It is a painful cold. Despite the Prednisone I'm in pain in my hands, neck, shoulder, and feet. Small bones. Not good. Once I start decreasing the dosage of Prednisone the pain escalates in proportion. If I could take it all the time, I would.

I see the doctor in three weeks. I wish I could see her sooner and get it over with and maybe, just maybe find something that works. Nothing is working.

Back to NaNo. I don't care for the story. It isn't that I hate it. There just isn't a story there. I wish I'd gone rebel and worked on one of the other stories I have in progress. I'll get my 50K, more than likely but it will be 50K of boring prose with no purpose. I think this is the first time I've had that happen. I usually know when there is a story. Generally, the problems I face is painting myself in a corner and having no idea of where to go from there. This is different. I don't feel any interest in it.

Of course, you should pay no attention to this any of that because we are in the middle of the 2nd week slump and this happens every year. We'll see how things look next Monday. By Saturday, the 15th, we need to be at 25,000 words. After that, things tend to move pretty fast.  I'll keep pounding away at the keys.

NaNoWriMo Day 2

We've reached day 2 of NaNoWriMo. I got off to a good start and am just shy of 4K. I don't know how long the story will keep the momentum but I'll ride until it stops.

I did the first virtual write-in this afternoon for several hours. Roughly 10 people in and out during that time. Really an easy way to write and have fun with the group. And on a cold day, must more enticing than a trip somewhere.

If you're doing NaNoWriMo and want to join our virtual write-ins, join our S. Indiana region and get the instructions there. Or if you're in another region already, check with your ML about online write-in, particularly you folks in places where the snow gets deep and the temps even deeper.

For now, I'm going off-line. I had a terrible night last night. The weather is causing unbearable pain. I kept waking up crying out every time I tried to turn over. My hands and feet were in pretty painful shape this morning and I could hardly walk. I still went to church but I'm exhausted today.

Evansville NaNoWriMo Begins!

Today was the NaNoWriMo Kick-Off for my region. We had a nice turn out. Fifteen people all total. That's a little more than half I planned for. I had a lot of fun seeing everyone, a few for the first time.

I took photos this year. I don't know why I never have done that before but I always forget. The fact that I have a camera on my phone, albeit not a great one, made it easy this year. I intended to get more but simply got busy writing.

We had the kick off combined with a write-in this year and I liked doing it that way. One of the local libraries hosted us. Eleanor, our contact there, set it up and it is a nice big room. She also provided us with coffee and chips. We've got Saturday write-ins scheduled there all month. 

Now the hard part begins... 

 

 

 

How I'm Organizing My Writing Time

I'm such a goof-off. My October plans for writing were to become more consistent by sticking to a scheduled writing time but October has not gone smoothly. With NaNoWriMo on the horizon, I hope that this trend doesn't last. My good  intentions this month simply disappeared, with a few other plans I made, into the murkiness of my life.

I did write but not as much as I'd hoped. Most of the month I spent dealing with the weather. Not in some magical way but the changes in weather patterns tend to make my Rheumatoid arthritis worse. On top of that, for a couple of weeks I experienced plummeting blood sugar and I don't know why. I had to make adjustments. My blood pressure was also down by about 10 points on both sides of the equation. 

I know there will be some who think such problems should have no impact on writing but when you can't operate the keyboard because your hands are swollen and the joints stiff, or  you can't stay awake due to the extreme fatigue, then it has a huge impact. 

On a positive note, I found part of the problem was caused by dehydration. I had several days where I was extremely sluggish and unable to stay awake. After everything else checked out, I thought I might be dehydrated. So, I checked my skin. To do this pinch the back of your hand, below the knuckles and let go. If your skin is slow to return to normal, you're dehydrated.

Since I failed the test, I drank 24 ounces of water and in a hour I was awake again. I forget to drink and eat now that I'm not working. I don't get hungry or thirst and I don't go to lunch on a schedule to remind me. That isn't a good thing. I take a diuretic blood pressure pill and dehydration is a risk. 

I seemed to have licked the water problem. Less stress overall has probably resulted in the changed in blood pressure and blood sugar levels. So, now I need to bring myself to task.

Time

I went in search for something to assist me in staying on track with my writing. I'm terrible with schedules unless I have a calendar handy to prompt me and then I have to make myself stick in the chair for a specific amount of time, regardless of what happens. I decided I needed a timer, something a bit more elaborate than the basic kitchen timer I have on my phone. 

I have a friend who does a work schedule where she does her housework in breaks. She works 30 minutes and takes a 30 minute break. I've tried it and found it a great way to get a lot done and not feel overwhelmed. Months ago I ran across an article about the Pomodoro Technique(T) and it was basically my friend's method. 

I've wanted to implement this type of schedule for my writing time but I needed a good timer that allowed me to set the schedule I wanted to use without having to reset it each rotation. There is a Pomodoro timer but I didn't care for it. 

After examining several timer apps for my computer and phone, I only found one I really liked called Breaker. I've tried it several times and am happy with it. The ease of operation and low profile are just what I was looking for. And I can program a variety of schedules and rotations.

Organization

If you know me, you know I'm a rabid Google fan. I use everything Google that I can. I have email, blogger, YouTube, G+, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. There are other Google items but I'll stop with the most common. 

Google Calendar is my lifeline to my life. I schedule everything on it, right down to reminders to call someone. I have the app on my phone and it reminds me where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. I could download it to my laptop with Microsoft Mail or Outlook but I don't like either of those and it just adds stuff to my computer that I have to sort through and clean out periodically. Online, Google requires none of that. 

Today I found an app that I hope will prove useful in keeping up with things when I'm on the computer. Gminder is a small app on my taskbar that loads everything I have on every calendar that I tell it to load and reminds me. At the moment I have three calendars I monitor: one personal calendar for all my appointments, meetings, and assignments, one for NaNoWriMo calendar to let my region know when, where, and what time we have meetings, and a third tracking calendar as a separate log. 

I loaded Gminder on my computer on Tuesday, told it what calendars to load, and my scheduled items appeared in the minder. I got a notice immediately that it was my birthday. Did I really schedule my own birthday? Probably not. But my contacts' birthdays are included on my calendar so, if my birthday is in my contacts, then it is on the calendar. Why put my own name in my contacts? I have three email addresses and three phone numbers. This way, they're all handy if I need to send them to someone.

On first glance, I think I'll like Gminder. If I hate it, I'll have to schedule myself a reminder to come back and tell you. I think Breaker and Gminder are going to be excellent tools in my arsenal to get organized. One can only hope that they are effective. It's a choice.