Hello, once again, and welcome to the hectic tornado that is my current state of mind, as we hit the half-way mark for NaNoWriMo! Please, try not to judge too hard, as I give you another brief glimpse into what, exactly, is making writing so difficult right now.
My story for this past week includes a major success, some schoolwork setbacks, and a massive craving for sushi.
MY PROGRESS
So, like I said, try not to judge. It's been tough goings this past week, with many factors contributing both to an overall lack of time to write, as well as exhausted mental power when I do manage to find a few hours to spare to just sit down and focus.
For starters, we're heading into crunch time for school, with Week 8 out of 10. Yeah, midterms were all last week, but this past week has had its fill of scholarly deadlines, as well. Between working on a group paper and taking down simple Communications assignments that all add up to a much larger grade, there's been plenty of classes and papers to fill up my time.
Veteran's Day was also less of something helpful, and more of an awkward break-time that I didn't feel like I made the most of. I went home with my sister and my Little, and we had a good day getting errands done, making cookies, and having a Captain America marathon, but I probably should have spent a little more effort on making sure I got enough written that day. That being said, however, I was a little more focused on writing for an event the subsequent evening...
That's right, Panhellenic Elections. Hope y'all didn't forget about that, because I sure haven't. After preparing as much as I could the couple of days prior to the event, I ended up running unopposed, and my beautiful speech was prepared to no avail. I'm enormously grateful for my position, and super excited to get started, even if it does mean I may miss out on some more precious writing time.
And then, of course, there's the other regular parts of sorority life. We had Founder's Day to celebrate this past Saturday, and Initiation for our New Member Class just yesterday, so my weekend and some of the time leading up to it has been a bit compromised.
Even on top of that, one of my best friends from high school had a birthday to celebrate, and my best friend threw a surprise anniversary party for her parents, so "party time" took up space in the schedule than usual, too. And then there was that pesky College Fashion article I had due by this past Sunday afternoon, that I managed to frantically write in the space of about 28 hours!
I just had a really eventful week, okay? Unfortunately, that's pretty much resulted in me being about five thousand words behind schedule.
MY GET-BACK-ON-TRACK PLAN
So, with such a hectic past week, it's no surprise that my Sunday night was originally supposed to be pretty jam-packed, as well; however, after plans for a Panhellenic meeting fell through, I was suddenly faced with a wide-open evening!
I decided that I was going to write at least 3,000 words before I went to bed, so I set myself firmly to the task. I ordered in some delivery sushi, cranked up the tunes, finally flipped to a new page in my outline, and set about writing as furiously and uninterruptedly as possible.
It was honestly a pretty successful exercise. I wrote just about 3,100 words, and every time that my brain tried to persuade me to take a break and go wander off into Social Media Land, I was struck on Twitter by the live-tweeting going on at NaNoWriMo's "Night of Writing Dangerously." and turned back to my writing.
This week is shaping up to be a bit more empty than my last one, so I'm pretty confident in the belief that these next seven days will be a big catch-up period for me. Even if not, my Dad keeps me afloat with the idea of the two of us hosting a kind of in-house writing workshop for just us two over Thanksgiving Break, so we can really dedicate some time to writing deliberately.
Still, I kind of like the idea of being finished before those last few days of November... when I'm so far behind now, is it even feasible that I'm entertaining the thought of finishing early?
RANDOM NOTES FROM THE FIELD
- People are finally starting to notice I'm serious about this stuff. While I'm incredibly happy this has resulted in a little more consciousness paid to keeping me un-distracted while I'm writing, it's also lead to a couple of recurring questions: "Can I read what you're writing?" and "What are you writing about?" Thankfully I've got it down to fairly pared down answers that are seeming to stick with people: "No; it's word vomit," and "I'll tell you when I'm finished."
- Also, I had gotten so used to having to explain to people what NaNoWriMo was, I was pleased to be approached by several people this week, who said they had no idea I was taking part in the challenge this year and were excited to see my progress. I forget sometimes that I'm not the only one who loves this stuff, mainly because I'm separated by a computer screen from most of those I know also taking part!
- Writing snacks are both a necessity and a curse: sitting down with tea and a muffin - or edamame and miso soup, like yesterday - just seems like such a more deliberate action, in sitting down and writing, but I inevitably run into problems. It's just more cumbersome to juggle good food and writing. Maybe take snack time in stride with meditation time, as a pre-writing exercise?
- I'm getting way more confident in this challenge, even with how far behind I am now. It's finally becoming real to me, that by the end of this month, I'm going to have written a big, ol' beautiful book!
So, that's where I'm sitting in terms of word count right now. Will I make up the deficit this week?
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