NaNoWriMo #2: Failure to launch

So … as the featured image above alludes so, my attempt at finally completing a NaNoWriMo is … featuring very little writing.

Like any good procrastinator, I do have excuses!

So I after I spent the night at Newcastle’s CreSoc’s first write-in on the 4th November, I wasn’t quite at the writing level. As explained in my last entry, I wanted to do this properly and therefore I wanted a good plan, rather than just making things up. However, I hadn’t quite managed to power through that write-in and fill in all the gaps in my plan.

I had been very hopeful for this year’s NaNo due to the fact I was no longer studying. However, I was over-optimistic by how much free time this gave me. Which was still very little – really the only change is I had a free evening now and then where I could fulfil non-academic commitments or possibly relax (but do I truly relax when nearly all of my hobbies are also some form of commitment) without feeling guilty there was a research project or an essay to be working on.

I may no longer have academic commitments or my dozen SU student volunteering roles – but, almost in replacement, I have been picking up duties within St John Ambulance, and these involve virtual meetings or physical meetings (the latter requiring travel). I have at least one commitment every week and there’s at least one week a month where most of my evenings are SJA meetings, and then numerous weekends where I commit myself.

I picked up some extra work for my SU (where I work at the moment 4.5 days a week), as a freelance video creator following the resignation of the previous in-house one, working on a few projects until a new in-house videographer was hired. Most of these I completed months ago, but one got pushed back until around now – so I also had that commitment I had to fit around.

And then a variety of other things – my weekly RPG commitments, picking up on personal admin, especially those I neglected during my studies … and a minor few days of slight illness, nothing too serious, but one of the symptoms was dizziness which is a concentration killer, and also meant instead of being able to work on my video task on one weekend day and get it done, I had to spread it throughout a week, which also meant I had to then wait longer for feedback on changes which means I’m still working on it now.

So – I had a lot on. You might be asking me with so many commitments, why did I ever feel I could accomplish it this year?

Valid question. Bit judgey, but valid, as I did concede above I was maybe a bit too optimistic. It was never entirely impossible. I had hoped I could use the time I was travelling to write whilst I was on the train, and also do some during my reception shifts where, when I’m not handling tasks, I’m usually free to work on my own stuff. Unfortunately, as an autistic and dyspraxic, I have the all too-common neurodivergent symptom of not being able to control my concentration. I’m either 100% committed in to something or I am not at all. This has often been the case with my writing which is why I have always shied away from planning – that’s a concentration momentum drain!

I had tried – I’ve sat in the train or at my desk, with the planning document up, tried to focus, and then got distracted (at the moment I am getting very distracted with Microsoft Flight Simulator and learning how to read flight charts and pilot an A320 …). But the truth is unless I get into that momentum, I am just flailing mentally. (Hence why having dizzy spells as I had for a few days is particularly impactful). This happens with my video work too – I was staring at Premiere Pro for like half a day – apart from when I got distracted – before I was able to spark the momentum that meant I got most of the edits done within a few hours of concentrated working.

So, where am I at now? Well I attended another write-in, one organised by another former committee member of CreSoc. I only attended this one for just under three hours, but I was able to get myself to a point where the plan is solid enough to write on.

So – do I start now?

Well, it’s 9 days until the end of November. To hit 50k that is 5555-6 words a day. That’s longer than all of any of the non-dissertation essays I had to write for my degrees. It’s a bit of guesswork to translate that into time – a lot of the time I spent on these essays were actually research, the writing was fairly quick once I knew what I had to say. As this is prose fiction, I (very happily) do not need to do research, at least not to then reference and cite to a standard. I could write an essay of this length, minus research time, in probably … 5 – 10 hours? In which case, 5555/day isn’t impossible yet … but that presumes I write this much every day when I have failed to do any for the last two weeks.

(Also, the task of writing this much, and having enough content per chapter, intimidated me slightly …)

I still have most of the commitments I mentioned above outstanding – and I need to plan for my 23 hour stream I am doing for Mind at the beginning of December. Looking at my calendar, I also have evening commitments on every day except for three, plus a free Sunday daytime. I technically do have five hours free every day, but on some days it would be at the lieu of rest and sleep. Evening activities, even if they end by 9pm, tend to knacker me when I get home (as they follow a full day at work and then I have to spend more spoons on people), and right now I’m going through severely poor mental health, using up more spoons and making me more exhausted.

One thing I was happy I would hopefully never have to ever have to do once I finished my studies is the unhealthy amount of forcing myself to work late and through the night and then feel really bad the next day – even if I return I hope I’d be in a better place to avoid that. So far this hasn’t quite worked out with several commitments requiring me to do all nighters …

If I’m going to get back into creative writing I don’t want to tarnish it by making it one of these – I don’t want it to feel like work.

So I could just start writing, not to push myself, and see where I got to by the 30th – I don’t want to write this outside of November (although I do want to write other things) – I feel if I commit to writing a novel, I might as well do it during NaNoWriMo. But I also don’t want to leave the story abandoned, nor do I want to pick it up next November – there’s no rigid rules in NaNo that anyone will enforce on me, but for my own accomplishment I want the 50k to all be in one NaNo, so I can say I wrote a novel all in one month.

To that end then – the decision I need to make is, can I commit to pushing myself to 5555 words a day for the next week and a bit, or be satisfied that I have a plan that means come NaNo23, I can start writing on day one without having to waste time planning (and then have a luxurious 1,667 words/day). This also gives me time to evaluate my plan. Truth be told, I like my idea, but I worry it’s short story territory (which you can do for NaNo, but I wanted to go big or go home). A year might be enough time for me to come up with a better idea, develop a plan before November, and then work on that new plan then, rather than planning during November which, I do not have the idea generation competency to do and then write the same month. If I did decide to do that, Cat’s Eyes would be written just whenever, possibly as a warm up to NaNo23.

So. What will I decide?

Well … in true writer fashion, I’ll procrastinate on it and work it out later.