fabled_librarian

 

22010 / 18000 words. 122% done!

 

21202 / 33100 words. 64% done!


Content Warning: Brief and vague mention of chronic illnesses and some of the side effects of them.

This is the main post where I'll update my writing goals progress throughout 2020. I'm participating in the Get Your Words Out Habit Challenge for the third time in a row this year. I pledged a goal of writing or working on writing at least 120 days during the year, which is the same goal I pledged the previous two years. I've also set a personal annual word count goal of trying to write at least 33,100 words over the course of the year. I'm going to try to track my progress for both here, as well as my progress in any other writing marathons I do throughout the year. This is the format I used for tracking in 2019, and I liked it much better than trying to keep up with quarterly updates. I might try to post them, too, but this format is much easier for me to use and it makes it easier for me to find and compare the information I'm looking for. For the sake of my spoons, I generally update the habit and marathon goals monthly on this website, as opposed to daily. The word count goal I sometimes update daily here, especially during Camp/NaNoWriMos. But even so, my progress may not always be reflected accurately in real-time both because I tend to track in multiple different places -- often with a piecemeal approach, and because I have several chronic illnesses that eat up my time, energy, concentration, and memory.

CW: hospitalization, chronic illness, dysfunctional relationships, ableism

 For Get Your Words Out, I'm really pleased with and proud of myself. I managed to write or work on writing all but two days in November and also for a lot of days in October. October is the first month where I actually met my quota for days writing, though in one other month I wrote for nine days which was one shy. I don't want to be in a rush to meet my quota at the end of next year. I also want to pace myself and I want for writing to be a regular, daily thing for me -- not something I do every once in a while. Having a deadline really helped. So did two books: The Right to Write by Julia Cameron and Write-A-Thon by Rochelle Melander. Those books really helped me to write more often, more fluently, and to be less perfectionist about it. I haven't finished either of them, yet, but I plan to. They both have unintentional ableist elements, especially the latter (which I have done less work from) and many of the exercises are the same or similar, but I found them both to be helpful. I'm hoping to dig into Write-A-Thon in March of 2019 to help me get ready for CampNaNoWriMo in April 2019. I'm also hoping to finish The Right to Write before January, so that in January, February, and March, I can focus on doing the exercises laid out in another book by Cameron, The Artist's Way, which I've read has a writing program in it that takes three months.

I participated in NaNoWriMo in November. I only officially wrote 714 words during it, but as I said earlier I wrote our worked on writing all but two days in November. I even managed to write when I was admitted to the hospital for four days, though to be fair, if I hadn't written shortly after midnight the day I went in (which was before my health crisis hit the tipping point) I probably wouldn't have written that day. I also probably wouldn't have been able to do it if my partner hadn't picked up a notebook and pens for me at the drug store and brought them to me. I am also going through a difficult breakup with someone I've been with for a very long-term relationship. My other (and now only) partner and I are moving out of the house we've lived in for the last five years and that we hoped to live in for the rest of our lives, and my former husband's girlfriend is moving in with him when we move out. There are lots of other complications, too, mostly involving health, but not all of them. So because of those things, I'm considering NaNoWriMo 2018 a win and a personal victory for me.

I didn't even come close to meeting my personal word count goal for the year. I believe I'm at about a quarter of the way done. When the deadline for the word count goal arrived, I decided to extend it until December 31st, which I had been debating doing. That gives me more time to meet my goal (though I still doubt I will) and it also lets me start my future word count goals on January 1st, which makes more logical sense and is when most people do them from. It'll also let me keep track of them as a secondary stat along with my writing days for next year's Get Your Words Out. The days and the words still probably won't line up, but it'll be more even and easier to keep track of.

Writing more frequently has definitely made it much easier for me to write and to want to write. Not that it's necessarily made my writing any better, but it's helped me write more often, in more places, and with less difficulty. It's made it much easier for me to get over resistance to writing.


I've missed too many days of writing this year to meet my Get Your Words Out habit goal of at least 120 days this year. But I'm going to try to be as few days short of my goal as possible.

I'm disappointed that I've only read fifteen books so far over the course of the year, which works out to one book and a quarter each month. It particularly irks me because before I got sick, I used to read a book a day -- occasionally every other day or every three days if it  was a book that was long, complicated, dense, or difficult to understand, or if I had more things to do than normal, which cut into my reading time. I am really peevish about this, and wrathful that I don't remember nearly as much as I used to -- including what I read. It is largely internalized ableism on my part, and I'm trying to get over it, but it really aggravates me. It seemed like Novel Knight stopped running the Beat the Backlist challenge partway through the year, though I could have been mistaken. I kept keeping track on here, though. But there is a signup for next year, so I'm definitely going to do that, as well as the Get Your Words Out writing challenge again. And next year, I'll also attempt to participate in both CampNaNoWriMos, NaNoWriMo, and the 3 Day Novel Contest. For Get Your Words Out, I'll do the Habit Challenge again, if it's available. I am not sure if I'm going to stick with 120 days, or if I'm going to move to 240 days. Additonally, I'm going to set an annual word count goal for myself that I've already worked out the math for. And I'm going to try to take part in The Writer's Games, if I'm able to, if I remember in time, and if I can figure out how to, because their website really confuses me for some reason.

I listed my mood as "irritated", which is true, but it has more to do with life circumstances and hormonal fluctuations than it does with the lion's share of what I wrote about.