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Weirdness has been afoot this month, which has been a capsulized, compressed version of the weirdness that has been going on all year. Personally speaking, 2012 has been a challenging year ("challenging"). Along with the year that I broke pretty much everything in my upper body and the year that I had to finish my half-not-done-yet PhD thesis in under two months, 2012 is a contender for hardest year of my adult life. It is up there. And probably it isn't in the number three slot. November saw fit to throw all the challenges of 2012 into the pot at once.
Yet I've kept writing. I've been feeling blue and strange and discombobulated, but somehow I've still found it in me to hit the last few days of this challenge with everything I've got. I won NaNoWriMo ("won") this past Tuesday. I've just about finished with the middle of my story and I'm into the gear up to the final conflict. There will be much to flesh out. I can see myself hitting 83614, my secret personal November goal, by the end of the day November 30. These numbers in no way are representative of the serious slogginess of writing this particular book. It's dark and nasty. I'm turning over a lot of rocks for this one, even as a lot of rocks are being hurled at me in regular reality.
Yet I've kept writing. I've been feeling blue and strange and discombobulated, but somehow I've still found it in me to hit the last few days of this challenge with everything I've got. I won NaNoWriMo ("won") this past Tuesday. I've just about finished with the middle of my story and I'm into the gear up to the final conflict. There will be much to flesh out. I can see myself hitting 83614, my secret personal November goal, by the end of the day November 30. These numbers in no way are representative of the serious slogginess of writing this particular book. It's dark and nasty. I'm turning over a lot of rocks for this one, even as a lot of rocks are being hurled at me in regular reality.
It's a rock thing.
What's the single hardest writing challenge you've had to face? I want to hear your inspiring stories. Or some spam advertisements for shoes or survivalist websites. Either way.
(61806 words)
14 comments:
Dude! What's this about breaking your upper body? And how could November be worse than that?
>blink<
I have no stories at the moment...
I feel like I must have written about my big break (ha ha) before. Long story short, it's something that happened twenty years ago. I'm fine now. I'll put the longer version on my list of things to post about in December. Promise.
Well, you may have, but, if you did, it was before I found you. I can poke around your archives later.
I'm looking...I don't think I did. I know I wrote about it but maybe it was in another space (another galaxy, far far away...). It might be interesting to revisit that whole deal now. It's been up front in my mind because I injured my right arm a few weeks ago and that took me back down memory lane. Plus it's always fun to boast about being a cyborg, aka having metal bits in my arms.
Sending you virtual cookies, Elizabeth. So sorry you're having a tough year. Keep on posting when you can, I love your posts.
As for challenges, I really ought to stop doing them. I never finish them. I start out keen but it all fades away. Hmmm. That's not very inspiring, is it?
I do write every day, more or less. Although I was thinking about having a quiet December writing-wise.
Hmm, inspiring...well, I've got my Motivational Monday post up for this week, if that helps.
But I've found, too, that some years are just like that - challenging - and you just have to ride it out and hope the next one will be better. It would almost have to be, right? :)
If I was a cyborg, I'd talk about it all the time!
I heart, heart, heart your wry wit, sister. Heart it.
How'd you arrive at that secret goal word count for NaNo?
My biggest ish with writing right now: I'm not. Nothing new, anyway. I'm tweaketty-tweak-tweaking, which needs doing. But I'm very aware of not living up to what I believe I am. I'm a-scared. Which is not only le suck, but le laaaaaaaaaame as well. (Wah, wah, wah...)
Some Dark Romantic
Well, I think it is a victory for you. Writing in our normal life is hard, but to do it when every possible hurdle seems to hit you at once is superb.
Come nov 30, open a bottle of wine, sit back and give you at least an hour to feel awesome and strong. You deserve it!
@Debs, thanks. I am basically fine, just constantly surprised at the pettiness of others. It's all going into the well for later extraction as fiction. Ahem on challenges: I seem to recall you cleaning up on Write 1, Sub 1. Seems to me that you're more of a marathoner rather than a sprinter, but you excel at the long term slow and steady thing. (Well, semi fast and steady, if I understand your weekly submission rate correctly.)
@Madeline: I will check out your post. According to my Chinese horoscope, next year should be all puppies and fireworks. I'm holding the Chinese astrologers to that.
@Andrew: It's funny, people get tired of hearing it after five or six years.
@Mina: Thank you. I am right there with you on the fear. I'm hoping it will help me rise to new heights. I need to get into more tweaking and submitting. Learning how to fix broken writings is one of my goals for 2013. I'm okay with polishing, not so good with serious corrections and repairs. (My secret word count goal for November is my total raw word count goal for 2012 minus the number of words I'd already written as of November 1st. If I make 83614 this month, I'm taking December off.)
@Gina: Wine will definitely be in order! And a giant pillow concussion.
Wow, you did a PhD thesis and won Nano?! Those are some serious chops! The hardest thing I had to do in terms of writing was to write a middle grade work-for-hire novel in one month. Uh, huh.
I had no idea how fast I could write under the metaphoric gun.
GREETINGS, EARTHLING!! Gottawanna run back to the Elysian Fields soon, but take anything and everything you wanna from our wonderfull, plethora-of-thot to write the next, great masterpeace -if- I can but kiss your gorgeous, adorable feets and/or cohesively cuddle withe greatest, ex-mortal-girly-ever to arrive in Seventh Heaven. Think about it. Do it! Get back with me Upstairs, k? God bless you, doll: pleasure-beyond-measure is waiting in the Great Beyond for you and eye. Love you. PS: the musical term MORENDO means ‘dying-away in tone-and-time’. How very apropos for U.S. …thewarningsecondcoming.com
Man. Breaking everything in your upper body? I feel like nothing can compete with that. :/
I think my biggest writing challenge was rewriting my book. :/ Took a lot of self-reflection.
Well done on the win. Mmm... at this stage, my biggest writing challenge remains the query pitch.
The phrase alone is enough to send shivers down my spine.
Good luck with finishing your WiP!
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