In Which July Can Kind of Fuck Off
Well, the good news is July's done.
The bad news is that it's done and not really how I wanted it to happen.
I knew I was going to be tired by the end of July. But I was expecting that tiredness to be caused by the write-a-thon and a heavy push on my writing to get a second draft done.
Then, about a week before the write-a-thon was to start, my work went sideways and straight to hell. Suddenly, I had no support, no backup, and a shit ton of work to do and literally not enough time to complete it.
Exhaustion is a kind of amazing thing. You don't notice it at first. You push for staying up a little later one day, you're stressed a little bit another day, but everything is fine. Except it builds in little corners, like a pile of dust. You see it when you enter the room and turn on the lights, but it seems so small and inconsequential, so you keep doing what you've been doing.
And then suddenly every little thing costs so much more, everything hurts a little more, and all of those grand dreams and plans go collapsing into a heap as life becomes a struggle just to keep everything together for a little longer.
It's easy to forget, but there are little victories and these can be just as, if not more, important than the big ones. Every day where you don't let a bad day or a busy day or an unexpected hell of a project devour everything you have, when you find the strength after a long day to sit down at the computer and pound out another few hundred words of new content, when you sit with your sketch book instead of zoning out in front of the television, or practice your instrument or scribble lyrics or clean the kitchen and make a meal instead of going out yet again.
These too are victories. It doesn't matter if the sketch is terrible, the lyrics pathetic, the writing makes your eyes water, that you didn't clean the bathroom on top of everything else and okay, you've made that dinner better in the past. This is how a novel really gets written, how artists slowly hone their skills, and how we live the lives we want, in spite of the daily grind that tries to wear us away.
I met my minimum word count for the write-a-thon (750 per day) and I now have roughly half a novel edited. I did not have this before I started July. I also got everything done in time except for that one report for the state, but I don't have nice words to say about them right now anyway.
So, it's not a triumphant, resplendent victory. But it's not a loss either.
The novel may also be a twee smaller now.
Word count for equivalent places in the story:
Old word count: 47162
New word count: 34208
Hunkering down in the trenches and getting my breath back before plowing into the next big project.
The bad news is that it's done and not really how I wanted it to happen.
I knew I was going to be tired by the end of July. But I was expecting that tiredness to be caused by the write-a-thon and a heavy push on my writing to get a second draft done.
Then, about a week before the write-a-thon was to start, my work went sideways and straight to hell. Suddenly, I had no support, no backup, and a shit ton of work to do and literally not enough time to complete it.
Exhaustion is a kind of amazing thing. You don't notice it at first. You push for staying up a little later one day, you're stressed a little bit another day, but everything is fine. Except it builds in little corners, like a pile of dust. You see it when you enter the room and turn on the lights, but it seems so small and inconsequential, so you keep doing what you've been doing.
And then suddenly every little thing costs so much more, everything hurts a little more, and all of those grand dreams and plans go collapsing into a heap as life becomes a struggle just to keep everything together for a little longer.
It's easy to forget, but there are little victories and these can be just as, if not more, important than the big ones. Every day where you don't let a bad day or a busy day or an unexpected hell of a project devour everything you have, when you find the strength after a long day to sit down at the computer and pound out another few hundred words of new content, when you sit with your sketch book instead of zoning out in front of the television, or practice your instrument or scribble lyrics or clean the kitchen and make a meal instead of going out yet again.
These too are victories. It doesn't matter if the sketch is terrible, the lyrics pathetic, the writing makes your eyes water, that you didn't clean the bathroom on top of everything else and okay, you've made that dinner better in the past. This is how a novel really gets written, how artists slowly hone their skills, and how we live the lives we want, in spite of the daily grind that tries to wear us away.
I met my minimum word count for the write-a-thon (750 per day) and I now have roughly half a novel edited. I did not have this before I started July. I also got everything done in time except for that one report for the state, but I don't have nice words to say about them right now anyway.
So, it's not a triumphant, resplendent victory. But it's not a loss either.
The novel may also be a twee smaller now.
Word count for equivalent places in the story:
Old word count: 47162
New word count: 34208
Hunkering down in the trenches and getting my breath back before plowing into the next big project.