The Doldrums of Progress

Holy smokes, it’s already July.

So howdy, everyone! It, uh, seems that time’s gotten away from me! Here I was being a smug bitch, starting up on a plan to try and keep myself accountable and maintain forward momentum with writing. Y’know, by planning a monthly update blog right as I returned to work after 12 weeks off for medical leave. And as should be a surprise to no one, writing went fuck all for a while there! So much so, that I didn’t do shit in May, and didn’t have shit to say at the start of June! Gotta love looking back on a month and going, haha, I didn’t get any writing done, hahahaha, hahaha, haaaaa …

*deep, soul-wrenching sigh*

June was shaping up to be about the same, too, with despair starting to set in around the edges of my mind. Here I was, so productive over my leave, in spite of being at like 70% capacity for so much of it while I recovered while taking on a full-time school schedule. Half-time school, full-time work, and 100% capacity would mean I could keep writing, right? Well, apparently not. I started to worry that I would have to just put all writing on hold until I’m done with school, which should be coming up in June of 2026. Just a year of no writing, then maybe I could start again when my nights and weekends were less full. All I’d have to do is let my soul get ground down to powder for another year! Awesome. AMAZING.

Fortunately for me, though, June wasn’t entirely devoid of writing, and I’ve begun to settle into a painful, but hopefully workable, compromise. Between work and school, I just don’t have the time nor energy to write every day (or at least most days of the week), the way I had been when on leave. I instead found that I could either work and do schoolwork, or work and write, but not both in the same day, and that there were enough other things going on with life that I couldn’t write every day that I wasn’t doing schoolwork. Hell, I could even write most days when I didn’t have schoolwork, either. What I could do, however, was make sure I wrote for one day a week.

So, in the last week of June, I made good on that option, and wrote for one day.

Vorstnacht (working title, novel)

So some progress has been made, but not very much. A total of 1,053 words were written, which is at least a decent amount for a single day, but that’s all that happened for the month, that single day of writing. Hey, I’ll take it. And considering what my overall writing in April looked like, it’s only like a third as much as was written for Vorstnacht that month!

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Anyway, this is about the shape of things for the time being, I’m afraid. I’m planning to keep things going with a rate of one writing day squeezed in per week, and thus far I’ve kept to that in July. That means there will for sure be a retrospective to write in early August, even if I manage nothing else for the month, so I at least have that going for me. But this does feel sustainable, I think, which means I have a vague goal of around 4k words per month, keeping true with the once a week writing days. If that holds strong, I should be wrapping up the novel in like one year and nine months, which isn’t terrible, and I’m hopeful that if nothing else I can ramp up a lot once I’m finished with school. Either way, novels get written eventually at a pace like this.

Poker Game (working title, short story)

To make mention of this one, which I was working on back in April, I haven’t made any progress on it, but felt it sensible to talk about it a little. I’m glad I finished the draft in April so it isn’t something to feel guilty over about starting and not finishing, because when I started to get back into things at this reduced schedule, it wouldn’t be on the table work work on anything other than Vorstnacht for a while. I haven’t edited Poker Game as of yet, though. That has fallen far to the back burner while I’m in this current mode of just trying to find once a week to write, because I definitely don’t want to work on edits for it while I’m so strapped for writing time. I’ll pick it up again to edit when my schedule feels less cramped, whether if that’s when I finish school or something else changes. In the meantime, its first draft is finished and it will sit in storage until I decide to do something else with it.

Conclusions

So not a ton to report this time around, but there at least is a plan in place. There might be some weeks when I’m so swamped with other stuff going on that I can’t make time to write, and I’ll have to take those as they come (I’m planning on sitting for a CLEP test to hopefully test out of one of my elective credits in a couple weekends, and that week might prove too busy for writing if I’m doing that and also my regular workload), but I’ll hopefully be able to keep up this slow momentum, which feels within the realm of possibility for me. And at the end of the day, 4k words a month equates to 48k words a year, which is an acceptable enough total to not feel like time is totally wasted. It’s just a shame because when I’m in fighting shape my output is more like 250k-300k words a year, and it would be nice to get back there. Still, I see the light at the end of the tunnel for my degree, so I can maybe get back there soon. Either which way, slow journeys are still journeys, and I’ll take any forward movement that I can.

That’s all I got for this one, hopefully July treats me well and I’ll be able to post with a happier tone in August. TTFN.