writing updates

we're heading into the last week of NaNoWriMo and i'm staring up at the mountain of words still left to write to finish on time. i came into this month strong, kicking off with a 10k-first-day and nursing optimistic dreams of writing 87k words this month, and then promptly crashed and burned.

it's not for lack of trying -- only a few days into November, my personal life imploded from Very Big, Very Sad events. anything and everything else stopped being a priority. i haven't written since the 14th -- which, in NaNo terms, is a dauntingly immense amount of time and words. i've gone from being thousands of words ahead to thousands of words behind, and with every passing hour those initial dreams of 87k get further out of my grasp.

i'm now in a place where i have some literal distance and metaphorical breathing room from the Very Big, Very Sad life events, and the prospect of writing is once again on the table. there are a lot of questions i've had to ask myself over these last couple of days: about what it means to me to complete this challenge; whether the rest afforded by giving up is worth the hit to my pride. what does it mean to persist with writing during times of hardship? how do you differentiate between not wanting to write because you just don't feel like it, and not wanting to write because doing so will be an added and avoidable strain on your already-depleted resources?

the only clear answer is that there are no clear answers. i don't think there is any 'right' decision to make in this situation. writing has long been, paradoxically, a means of both escapism from and of engaging with things i struggle to deal with in my life. writing through the hard times gives to me as much as it takes, often simultaneously. what i do know is that the greatest catharsis comes from writing about a world, and characters, that i know intimately. so, if nothing else, i'm pivoting from my NaNoWriMo project (an objectively-cool epistolary novel about vampires with rabies) back to Bonds That Bend and Break. i love them, i miss them, and the prospect of returning to this fic fills me with an excitement that my NaNo project currenly doesn't.

as i write this, for the first time in 15 years of participating in NaNoWriMo, i genuinely don't know whether i'm going to hit the 50k. but with this change in direction i feel... optimistic. and hopeful. and excited. tune in November 30 to see how it all pans out :')

the internet isn't really the place to get into it in too much depth, but i was dangerously mentally unwell during the tail end of last year .... it took all my energy just to survive, let alone write. by the time i got medicated and started therapy and began getting better, the guilt of not having updated my fic in so long was eating me alive, and the resulting anxiety became yet another seemingly-insurmountable barrier keeping me from writing :////

the good news is that. therapy works ! who'd've thunk it !! for the first time in years -- possibly more of my life than i'd like to think -- i'm able to say that i'm no longer capital-D Depressed, i am simply Living With Depression (iykyk). and i'm learning that at least part of the Writing Anxiety has just been Perfectionism, Rebranded. though it's a long and arduous slog to unlearn a mindset i've held for most of my life, even recognising its influence on my writing has lessened that anxiety significantly.

the other thing is that i'd written three or four versions of the next chapter, and none of them felt Right. not in the 'i'm-a-perfectionist-and-this-doesn't-meet-my-standards' way, but in the 'this-isn't-true-to-the-heart-of-the-story' way. and i think i've finally hit upon a trajectory for the next chapter that fits the story at large :)

so, i'm working on that. slower than i would like, because unfortunately Life and Adult Responsibilites get in the way. but i'm enjoying it, and i'm writing things that make me laugh, and that makes me think that it'll all be okay.