Admitting Defeat.
So at the beginning of July, shortly after I sent Portal Wars away to be edited I signed up for Camp Nanowrimo. I hoped to finish the first draft of a book I started last November for the main Nanowrimo event. My target for the month was 30,000 words, I thought I’d easily reach this target of just under a 1000 words a day. But I was wrong, very wrong.
As I write this my total word count for July sits at 8110, or a mere 22000 words short of my goal. There is no way these words are going to get written this month. I am confident of reaching 15,000 words by the end of the week and might even make it to 20,000 but that will be a definite stretch.
I could go into the reasons for my Camp Nanowrimo fail, schools breaking up, sickness bugs and adjusting to a change in routine, but I know it will sound like I’m making excuses. The truth of the matter is that I’ve just been pushing myself too hard for too long and I’ve relished being able to spend time with my family.
Having worked evenings and weekends for the last seven years having this time back among my family feels amazing. My house is more organised than its been for a long time, and I am able to spend time baking with my kids. (as I write this another batch of biscuits are cooking in the oven!)
I’ve learnt a lot about my writing process this month, but I’ll save those lessons for a post after Camp Nanowrimo has finished. Mainly that writing while tired is not a good thing.
At the end of the day the important thing, is not ‘winning’ Nanowrimo, by completing a certain word count. The important thing was reconnecting with my story and finishing my first draft. I have definitely reconnected with my new story and hope to finish my first draft before the kids return to school in September. After that the revision process begins!
If you’d like to support my writing, receive exclusive Patron content, free copies of my books and generally be a truly wonderful person. Then you can become one of my wonderful Patrons with the help of Patreon.com.
27/07/2015 at 8:48 pm
Don’t think of it as a fail – think of it as an exercise in better understanding the circumstances in which you write best and the circumstances that you accept will coincide with less writing. 🙂
29/07/2015 at 9:24 pm
It’s certainly been a big learning curve this month and not in the way I expected at all. Although I have regular hours in my new job, I am starting to realize that writing will simply not happen on days when I work. Not unless I get up stupidly early (eg 5am) and write when my brain is at its freshest.
More to the point with the kids out of school I don’t have long periods of uninterrupted writing time during the week, they’ll appear in September.
My priority in these summer months is my family and this will leave less time for writing. I’m more than happy to make that trade off. (especially as I’ve already written more than I did in the whole of last summer, when I was working too much and didn’t see my kids.) Thank you for the Pep talk. 🙂
29/07/2015 at 9:47 pm
My pleasure my friend! I have been experiencing the same kind of reduction in productivity while my son has been out of school and figure I just must accept it! Looking forward to seeing what comes out in September. 🙂