Weeelll… my plan to have Obsidian Divide Book 2 drafted by today did not pan out. Writing plans: derailed. So now, I’m trying to find the middle ground between not beating myself up but also holding myself accountable.
Overall, I think it came down to a few factors:
- This stubborn middle act
- Underestimating other life adventures
- Depression
Middle Act Frustrations
I’m not sure what’s going on with this middle act. I have the pieces there, but they are just not fitting right, and I keep having this “it’s boring” voice on repeat in the back of my head. Most of the time I can quell that voice by chanting “the only job of a first draft is to exist,” but it’s hard to write when you’re, well, also bored.
I’ve been jumping around, working on the end, not writing linearly, which helps. And recently I’ve worked on scenes and ideas just for the hell of it, which also helps at least get the juices flowing. But there is just something… missing… and I cannot figure out what it is.
My snarky inner voice tells me it’s because I need more plot and less character angst. Which… okay. Maybe I do need to flesh out the “plot” points a little more.
I have this pet peeve developing of things just happening to the characters instead of the characters making things happen. But maybe I need to just chill and let things happen instead of railroading it all so much.
Life Time-Sucks
If you don’t already know, these are the other things going on for me: working full time, finishing up a house remodel, and taking care of a small farm of goats and related land.
I’ve also just gone through a life-alerting personal tragedy. So I’m also trying to focus really hard on self-growth habits and care: good food, exercise, positive socialization, therapy, and reading lots of books. And while most of this is normal to me, I forget sometimes how much time and energy it all takes.
Tales Of Depression
Depression is the worst beast, to be honest. If you haven’t experienced this particular mental delight before, it’s hard to really explain. And everyone experiences it differently, I think.
For me, it’s not just being sad and sleeping all the time, though that’s certainly a part of it. The worst part is I literally don’t care about anything. I (mostly) do my routines because I know intellectually it’s important and I’d like to keep myself and my animals alive, but everything else is just… a numb fog. It’s frustrating, but if I focus on how frustrating it is, then I start hating myself, and we go to other bad places.
This factor in itself is enough to derail all best laid writing plans. (Can you guess why mental health is such a theme in my books?)
The Solution
I let this deadline kind of sneak up on me, so time to reassess. I’m saying this for everyone else out there who might be struggling with this too: patience with yourself. It’s really easy to say, not easy to practice. Beating yourself up for something you can’t change now isn’t going to do anything, and shame isn’t going to alter behavior.
Sooo I’m reminding myself that I made goals with about a million other things going on. While I’m glad I made them to keep me motivated, perhaps they weren’t the kindest goals. And I did say in my goal-making post that I would alter the plan as needed. I just hoped it wouldn’t be alter the WHOLE plan, ha.
So, first up is making new goals to keep myself motivated, but remember to be more kind. I’m probably not going to make my December 12th deadline, which is disheartening. But I’m going to be okay with that, because life is a wee bit hard for me right now, and piling more on top isn’t going to help.
I still wrote 45,181 words over the past three months. So! We’re going to use that as the guideline. That’s about 500 words per day. I’m at a little over 115k in the manuscript right now, I’m guessing this is going to finish out at about 160k (remember, I’m still going to revise after that), so I need about another 45k. Which… okay, that’s three months.
So I needed to double my original deadline, is the gist here. Ha! That’s… awesome (not).
*chanting * I’m being kind to myself, I’m being kind to myself…
All right. Now we’re looking at end of August as the deadline, with easier goals.
It still doesn’t help my first issue, the trying to figure out my middle. But I think I’m going to try to shake things up, maybe call a friend for help, to see if I can jar loose whatever it is I’m missing in this thing.
Okay. Now I’d love to hear y’alls stories about writing plans getting derailed? Tell me I’m not alone, ha!
This whole piece is awesome and I really love the way you write it’s you and not anything forced coming out which makes the “read” so easy and flow so well.
I love to write as well and for many years I wrote State Lessons which is very technical and takes the “you/me” out of the writing totally get the “block” syndrome doing more research helped me get past it. Totally understand not the same for fiction writing but some similarities for sure.
Your writing is excellent and all that you go through and are going through make it that way so don’t beat yourself up too bad because it’s there just waiting to come out.