another year over

Long time no update!

Back in October, I was intending to do a short post about this year’s NaNo, but plotting and prep got the best of me and I got a little caught up in my own world sooner than expected. November, of course, was filled with Thanksgiving travels and NaNo, the latter of which I have now participated in 8 times. I can happily say I “won” again this year, hitting the 50k word goal in a personal record time of about 3 weeks. That makes 5 wins out of 8 attempts now I think, though the first 3 I know I counted any writing I did during the month rather than just what I put toward the NaNo project, which is what I have been doing for the last several years as to count everything I write during the month would probably put me well over 100K thanks to work.

This year’s NaNo, I tackled a second draft, from a blank page, of the first part of Ilyum, the works I had started in January and got carried a bit away with early in the year. The original draft of this part was about 55k words, though in NaNo I reached around 60k and maybe two-thirds of the way through the actual story that I had previously drafted.

I took the not quite two weeks between Thanksgiving and this past Monday to rest my brain from writing outside of work and then jumped back in because while NaNo was a success, my draft is not quite done and I gave myself a secondary goal of finishing it out by the New Year. I’m aiming for a total of 85k by then before taking a step back in January and jumping onto the editing train in February.

So where am I going with this?

Let me take you back to mid-November ish. I’ve been doing an occasional job application from time to time over the last six or so months, usually when I get annoyed or frustrated at my present job for reasons I will not share here. I have had no luck and been ghosted more than I’ve received a negative response, and have gotten zero invitations to the next stage in the process beyond my application. After a particularly bad day at work, I was a little at a loss for what I was doing with my life.

Half the time, applications are as stressful or more than the work I’m currently doing. Far too often, job adverts for “writers” seem to be looking for engineers who can write. It is particularly frustrating for me to be scrolling through qualifications for positions that want a bachelor’s or even master’s plus x number of years with an engineering background when the position title is “writer.”

Back to what I was saying. I was sitting on the couch in a mood talking about it with my lovely partner when he asked what I wanted to do with my novel. And we got to the topic of how I still want to be a published author at some point in my life. So, we made a loose plan of steps and next steps for my 2021 NaNo project.

Currently, the goal is to get to the point where I can begin to submit it by the end of next year, which I think should be plenty of time considering I am already on the second draft with a firm hold on what is happening and where it is going. And if it turns out I need more time, I’ll take more time (I’m still learning to be gentle on myself with everything, but I’ve gotten much better the last year).

Overall, I’ve written a ton this year, and I’m extremely proud of myself for that. I will have written more than 180k since January 1st, 2021, across 4+ projects, which I know is a significant personal best and more than I think I anticipated when I said I wanted to write more this year. In terms of word count and projects. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing where Ilyum and any other new ideas I have take me in 2022.