I’d like to begin this post by saying I fully intended to write another post in October but, once again, I was so focused on writing my novel that I just kept pushing it back. I’d like to say that after this post, I’ll make more of an effort to update more consistently but that’s not something I can promise, either to my audience or myself. Then I look at authors like George R. R. Martin. I don’t follow nor read his blog regularly but he’s not consistent with his updates either. I don’t want to be like him, though. I want to be able to give my audience content on a more regular basis.
That being said, I had a very productive month. I started and finished 3 chapters and wrote a total of 28 pages containing 16,000 words. It’s almost double what I wrote last month but I also had more working days than I did in September. My current system of writing 3 days a week is really working out well for me so I’m going to continue that trend until I feel ready to increase that. Though, I need to start waking up earlier in the day so I can squeeze in a couple more hours. I’ve been hitting my page goal every day so I haven’t been too worried about that. If I can wake up earlier, however, I can raise my daily page goal.
As productive as October was, there were several days where I wasn’t too proud of what I wrote when the day was over. Or the process felt like a slog. My confidence certainly dipped last month. The work was getting done but I was hating everything I wrote. I just had to keep telling myself that I can just fix it later. I know that’s what I will do. But for me, it’s just a matter of how much I have to fix. Will it just be a little or a lot? At least 2 of the 3 chapters I wrote this month will likely get hit with tons of edits and changes.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why September felt much smoother in terms of writing than it did in October, which, of course, didn’t help my confidence every time I sat down at my computer to write. At first, I thought my writing suffered because I wasn’t reading as much. In September, I read 2 books. In addition to that, I read those books every day including the weekend. In October, though, I started re-reading a book I read probably 8 years ago. I have a ton of books at home and there are so many that I have only read once so I wanted to use this time to re-read some of my favorites. Currently, I’m reading The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s a great book and has been a wonderful reference in regards to my own writing because it feels similar to how I’m approaching my own novel. But I haven’t been reading every day, even most week days. And when I do read, it’s not for very long. So, I think that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been super happy with what I’ve written recently. Luckily, the book is pretty long and I have a ways to go before I finish it. I just need to be more diligent.
Another reason why I feel like my writing suffered is because I am not writing in this blog as much. I wrote a few posts in September and only 1 in October. As an aspiring writer, I find it helps when I can take a break from my novel to work on something different. That’s why I like having a blog. It’s much easier to use this as a writing exercise instead of trying to formulate another story idea. For me, at least. I’m sure other authors do it. Anyways, since I focused on my novel instead of giving my brain a rest to read or write something else, I feel like I got stuck a lot more often. It’s difficult to explain.
The last reason my writing suffered, and I think is probably the biggest, is that I’m just overthinking it. There were 2 chapters I added recently to my outline as it was necessary to the events towards the end. But since I hadn’t planned to write those chapters in the first place, it was a bit difficult to write. Those are the 2 chapters that will likely get a bunch of edits. And maybe they will get cut in the end. For now, though, it felt necessary for the story and the character choices to make sense.
At the end of the day, these are just excuses. I did spend too much time this past week trying to figure out why it was so hard this month. Next month will be different. I’m hitting a soft reset button. Now that I’m on the final few chapters, I’m hoping that since they were planned ages ago that things will really start to pick up. Ideally, I’d like to finish the first draft by Thanksgiving. It’s possible but I’m not going to hold my breath. That’s exactly what I thought last year and I completely imploded. If I do finish it by then, I’m going to take December off. I’ll probably do a little work to get it ready for rewrites/edits, but not much. It would be nice to take a little break before the editing process begins. I will not stress myself out trying to get it done in the next 4 weeks. If I don’t, I can still finish by Christmas.
Before I wrap this up, I will add a few more book stats. In total, since I started writing again in September, I have written 4 chapters and 43 pages containing 24,000 words. I don’t know the word count but when I wrote last year, I finished 6 chapters and roughly 60 pages in a span of about 6 months. I am very near to what I accomplished last year in a much shorter amount of time. That’s what I need to keep telling myself. The work is getting done. I just have to keep on going.
I also passed a few milestones in October. I am now over 200 pages and 100,000 words. If you need a basis of comparison, my book is currently as long as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It will fall well short of the 4th Harry Potter novel since I only have maybe 4 chapters left including an epilogue. Probably another 20,000 – 30,000 words.
That’s about it. I’m gonna work on publishing more blog posts in the next few weeks not related to my novel. As always, feel free to like and/or comment!
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