My Writing Life – In Need of a Rest

It’s been a mixed week this past week. I’ve both excelled in my writing goals and needed to a day off and to rest.

I’ve been saying that I want to write a full novel and not just the NaNoWriMo 50,000 words this month, but I haven’t really been doing the words to advance that goal. That was until this past week.

Thursday saw me go out for the day to meet up with a friend, but it didn’t deter me from writing, quite the opposite, I had to catch a train, an hour each way, so I took my laptop and by the end of the day, I had written 3,000 words. This, I decided was my new daily goal if I intended to complete that full novel. 3,000 words every single day without fail.

Friday nearly saw that goal go up in flames as the previous day running about seeing my friend caught up with me and exhaustion took hold. I thought I was going to fail at the first hurdle, but no, I still managed to do my 3,000 words.

This made me feel on top of the world. I was getting ahead of the NaNo graph and it felt good, to see the progression that way.

How was I doing this? 3,000 words every day? Because Saturday came and I did another 3,000 words.

I usually do 15-minute work bursts, but I’ve stretched that a little to half an hour bursts because I do about 500 words in 15 minutes and therefore 1,000 words in half an hour. Therefore I only need to work three bursts in one day to hit my goal. If I’m particularly struggling I will split one of those up. But It’s good to do it in three short bursts because the rest of the time I am resting, getting ready for the next burst.

Sunday and Monday were the same and my graph was looking really good. The story was flowing because I was working on it every day. On Monday I even had a Eureka moment when I figured out how the cops would figure out it was the bad guy. An area I always struggle to work out. It all seemed to be going swimmingly.

That was until Tuesday. I could barely get myself out of bed. I was exhausted. Totally and utterly wiped out. I could feel it in my bones. I knew that if I made myself get up and work I would be building on the exhaustion and I would make myself worse and worse the more I fought it. So, I took the decision to take the day off. I didn’t take the decision lightly. I’d been doing so well. But, I figured that if I took the day off and recovered some of my energy then I could come back at it refreshed and get back on it. If you think about it I was working four times harder than usual. My word count was usually about 1,000 words a day. Now I was writing 3,000 words and editing another project. Was it any wonder I was so tired?

The editing project is going well. So far I have just been doing the editing, working on it without really knowing if I’m doing any good or just making a huge mess of things. Tuesday while I was taking the day off writing I read the part of the manuscript I had edited and was happy with what I had done so far. I could see the difference. The problem with this editing project is the feedback isn’t definitive. It’s that a character needs to change, to be different from the way I’ve currently written them, and that can mean anything. But, I’m plodding on.

It’s now Wednesday and I’m not sure how much energy I have. Whether one day was enough. I’ll take it steady and try and do some work, but I feel genuinely wiped out. Living with disability and writing and trying to be like everyone else, it doesn’t always work. But I’m also determined. I want to finish this project. It’s not that this is manual labour, but it’s the brainpower that’s involved. I can do it!