Unclogging the Pipe

Confession! Before November, it had been over a year since I had written basically anything.

I've outlined, and brainstormed, and outlined, and browsed Pinterest, and outlined, and outlined. I also watch so much Our Flag Means Death. All of that is important to the writing process! Refilling the well can be a long endeavor, especially for neurodivergent folks. But it took longer than I ever expected and then some.

My last attempt at writing a novel had me stuck at 60K words of plotless vibes, and no will to continue. I wrote some short stories (and one was in an anthology! Maybe I'll write about that experience soon), but words were hard. Hard to get out, hard to convince myself they were worth keeping. 

But this year, with a new idea and a solid outline, I geared up to write! I had motivation, I had side character foils, and I had seven layer plot dip (shoutout Turning to Story podcast, completely invaluable resource and funny as hell).

Then I had a call with my wonderful agent who correctly poked a giant hole (gaping, birds flying through it) in my plot from a thematic and marketability standpoint. I wasn't back to square one exactly, and as we discussed, the bones were good, but one change meant a hundred changes, especially in speculative fiction. 

I still wanted to do NaNoWriMo. Desperately. I needed to get back to writing.

I wanted to come back from a long burnt out writing break and blow NaNoWriMo out of the water but boy oh boy. That hasn't happened!

Oof! Then starting that evening, I had the most stressful week of my entire year! Perfect timing! I cope with humor and sarcasm! But I really had my heart set on the “Write Every Day” badge from the NaNoWriMo site. We have to get our motivation where we can. I'm not sure what compels me to go for this badge. I'm neither a completionist nor a write-every-day evangelist. But that's the one I wanted, even if I didn’t make the rest of them. So even if it was just a few words, I was determined to get something down every day that month. 

The best way I was able to keep writing even though I know most of what I wrote that first week of NaNo is getting lovingly yeeted to a graveyard doc, is to remind myself that the words are going to be rusty. I'm unclogging a pipe. 

I can't take credit for the perfect metaphor (even though I wish I could). That honor goes to a tumblr post:

Thank you tumblr user keyboardandquil, because I really was chanting the first line of your response here every time I sat down and write in November. And you know what? I like some of what wrote in week two. I got to know my characters and what they want. It's nice to remind myself I'm good at this, that I know what I'm doing.

Until I hit the end of the month and realized the characterization, the central motivation for my main character, for multiple other characters, was wrong. I wrote myself notes in brackets, to fix things later, and wrote about 23K in November. Not quite half a NaNo but more than I’d written in months and months. December had some rough patches, too. Money issues, health problems. So I wasn’t going to force myself to write every day. I decided not to push the draft to be completed with so much wrong in the first chunk. 

I needed to re-plan. Going in with the vaguest outline to NaNoWriMo was probably not the best idea, but I hadn’t had time between changing up my plot and the start of November to get anything more detailed. I found out the hard way that I’m firmly a plotter. Should have known, because that was how I wrote the book I signed with my agent with so quickly. A couple months of plotting and then busting the first draft out in a frenzy of typing. If I have a map I can go fast but I have to make that map first. And friends, I do not have a degree in cartography. 

Here at the end of the year, I’m working on my book every day, but right now I’m still outlining. It feels good that the pipe got a bit unclogged, but it might not be totally fixed yet. 

Of course, there are other reason it's hard to write. Capitalism is the big one: holding a full time job and commuting eats up a lot of time and drains me of energy and creativity. And my job is great, especially compared to a lot of others. All things considered, I will probably continue to have that day job even if I become a success at writing, because those four- and five-part payments aren't going to cut it on the bills. I don't write for money, but it would be great to have something I love fund the life I want to live.

Dealing with hopelessness, with jealousy seeing people talk about their unannounced projects, secret publishing news, deal announcements... I'm not proud of this but it's something I think more people deal with than want to admit. Being incredibly proud of and excited for all my author friends can and does co-exist with their very same announcements making me feel like a failure. Telling that little voice in my head to fuck off when it starts up will probably be a lifelong project, but one that's worth it because I love author friends and I want to just be excited, not jealous.

Since it’s the last day of 2023, this might be a good place to put some goals, resolutions, whatever I want. This is my blog, and I’m still unclogging. I haven’t written a blog all year, either. That “nobody cares” voice inside my has been strong, but I have to shut it up somehow. Why cares if no one cares? I’m going to write what I want; it’s my blog. 

So, first thing’s first: I want to get my pirate festival book, SCALLYWAG, ready for submission. This is a multi-part goal, because it means drafting, editing, sending to my agent, editing again, and maybe editing again. And editing more. But I can’t edit a blank page, so a whole draft is the main thing. 

Next, I have a few other ideas! A little middle grade, a little short stories, maybe a novella. I want to do a rough draft of one of those. That will involve an outline so add that to the list. 

Finally, I want to have more fun. Paint cute things on my walls, sew some clothes (getting a sewing machine is on the list), fix things instead of buying new ones, when I can. I want to visit more museums (museums are a blog topic for a later date), eat at local restaurants, and spend much much less time on social media. Social media has sapped more time from my life than anything else, and while it was instrumental in the beginning of my writing career, it’s not serving me anymore. It’s tanking my mental health, and my time to do things like read or write or anything. 

If all goes to plan, you’ll see me less on places like Threads and Instagram (I quit Twitter but left my account up), but I’ll have more words for everyone, and more adventures and fulfillment for myself. 

To anyone reading this: thank you! I hope you have a prosperous and beautiful new year. I hope you see art that makes you feel, and spend time in places you find peace in 2024.