Been a bit...

[kellan_the_tabby]

...but it's been a fairly sucky week-and-some, what with one thing and another.

NaNo started out poorly; my brain's been full of too much other stuff and I didn't have more than a bare outline and some fairly stingy character sketches. I figured I'd try winging it, and spent all of the first realizing that I can't wing it. So most of that evening was outlining and character sketches and that sort of thing, and on the second I commenced actually writing.

That went fine up until Thursday. I'd finally caught up on my words and was feeling pretty good about things, but then Thursday night my throat started to tickle. Then hurt. Then hurt a _lot_.

Friday I got some writing done, though not a lot; there was cleaning to be done, and space made for the futon for montuos amd dr_zrfq, and an outline written for the class on documenting a name I was teaching the next day, and sundry similar activities. They arrived, we ate chicken paprikas, there was much talking and general amusement, and we all went to bed, not too awfully late.

I didn't sleep more than an hour or so. Now, I'd expected something like this to happen; I was sick, and I had a class to teach the next day. I'm still not too sanguine about teaching, given some of my earlier spectacular failures, but I was willing to give it a try. I _wanted_ to give it a try.

But it wasn't teaching failures I was dreaming about, it was other stuff; and I realized sometime later in the day that I had in fact been quite feverish enough that it was messing my head up pretty hard. All I knew at fifteen minutes before the alarm, when I was busily printing out copies of my class handout in hopes of talking someone _else_ into teaching it for me, was that I shouldn't go. I felt nothing short of shitful.

I took NyQuil (at seven in the morning, yes indeed) and went The Hell back to bed. Slept until about noon-thirty. Spent the rest of the day doing Not Much, napping and reading, alternating between sweating and shivering (and intermittently both) because of the damned fever. Didn't write a bit. Finally recovered enough to consider making soup sometime in the evening, and take a shower while it was simmering. Chicken broth, sauteed garlic and onion, a smidge each of basil and oregano and thyme, a handful of noodles just before I was ready to eat it. Being clean in clean clothing and wrapped around some good food helped a lot.

Everyone (plus wanderingpixie) redescended around ten or so, and we again sat around and talked and stuff until not-too-late, at which point I got a slightly better night's sleep than previously.

Sunday wasn't too bad, but I still didn't get any writing done. The fever was mostly gone, at least, so I was somewhat better company, but we were out of the house most of the day and I felt pretty wiped out when I got home. Lunch at Tortilla Flat was good if slow (no fault of their own; most of the staff had mysteriously called out sick, and there were only two waitresses for the whole place) and the drive down to Philly to drop wanderingpixie off at the bus terminal was fine. I slept most of the way down, though.

Monday I cranked. Two thousand something words, some of which were even good. I was feeling pretty good about things.

Tuesday the coughing started. I always cough when I'm getting over a cold, usually for week or two. I think this time my brain came out with the goop (and maybe a lung or two, I'm not sure) and I spent the rest of the week entirely incapable of writing a thing, and getting gradually more depressed about it. I wasn't sleeping worth much, either (neither was Lewis, even though I slept on the couch one night so I wouldn't keep him up with the coughing). I cleaned, and mowed, and read things, and cooked; everything but writing. It got to the point where I'd flip to the window with the word processor and just want to cry.

Thursday or so I had a long talk with meradudd about it. I was ready to give up, just throw in the towel and pick up a job at the mall or something. He...well, he didn't talk me out of it, as such, but he gave me some real good things to think about. If you can't write, he said, outline. Or work on character. Or rewrite. Or something.

He also said that, y'know, my brain's been pretty full lately. And it has been, what with one thing and another. Maybe now isn't the best time for me to be writing, with the number of other things I have to think about, but that doesn't mean I should _stop_, just give up on something that's been my dream for a long time.

Yesterday wasn't any better, though, and I wound up talking to Lewis about it for a while. Forget the money, he said. Forget the nonfiction if that's what's messing you up, just forget everything but the writing you've been wanting to do for years. Don't give up on your dream so easily.

I took the rest of the day off from writing anyway. I wasn't in any condition to; I'm still coughing and still behind on sleep and still...everything else. But I could feel the muse starting to stir, and I figured if I just sat still long enough and didn't scare her away again, I might get somewhere.

I'm about ten thousand words behind on NaNo now. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it up by the end of the month; this year is busier than last year, and I'm in worse shape to deal with it. But I'm writing today, only 400 words so far. But while it's hardly 'lots', it's much better than 'none at all'.

I've also had several epiphanies about the novel I wrote _last_ year, and how to fix it. I actually _want_ to work on it again, for the first time in months. Things are feeling a little better. So...we'll see.

Comments

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

*many many hugs*

[amykb.livejournal.com]

Putting on the Writing Teacher hat...

Don't forget that each entry you make in your Livejournal is also writing--freewriting is as much of the process as pre-writing, drafting, re-reading, re-writing and everything else--sometimes you have to write to clear the brain so that the ideas flow freely enough that you can get to what you want to write...the important thing is that you are putting down words.

[kellan_the_tabby]

I'm putting down words, yes...but. I dunno. I guess I was hoping for ... not more immediate success at getting anything published (though I certainly wouldn't have objected), but at least something short of a total failure of my writing ability...

*sighs* I need to clear my brain somehow, anyway. Start taking the laptop places. Something.

Have you tried

[amykb.livejournal.com]

guided (focus) writing? I can pull out some stuff for you if you want. these are simple exercises that focus on a specific topic and allow you to explore it. For example. You are in a large bubble. This is your space, no one can enter without your permission. Describe it using all 5 senses.

Re: Have you tried

[kellan_the_tabby]

Meh. A little bit - but most of the exercises I've seen really leave me cold, and writing about uninteresting stuff doesn't help so much.

[wanderingpixie.livejournal.com]

I know you and I work a lot differently, in our heads. But I find that having to work on something can be the worst motivator ever. Sometimes it's necessary, but not as often as we tend to feel it is. I'm with meradudd in thinking that you should find something to focus your writing on but that it doesn't have to be the NaNoWriMo novel right now. *shrug*

I hope Sunday was better. (I haven't read that far yet.)

[kellan_the_tabby]

Sometimes the pressure works well for me - it did last year; that's what started me on this whole thing.

This year? Really not so much. I'm about to throw in the towel and maybe work on last year's novel for a while instead. It needs a lot of work and I think I finally know how to start fixing things.