This year has been crazy for me. I had surgery on my right foot in March and then had months of rehab. I started having severely painful headaches and discovered that I had a pinched nerve in my neck, and by the way, I have several herniated discs in my neck as well. I’ve expanded my freelance business again. I’ve been trying to stay organized and efficient through all of this, and I think I might have succeeded except…my writing had to be put aside.
I didn’t take this decision lightly. Anyone who’s known me for awhile knows that I usually write every day. I am always trying to reach a goal — a completed novel draft, complete a revision of a novel, or maybe an edit — and I work like hell to make it. I’ve always been this way. One of my main goals for the future was to publish at least one book a year, maybe even two if I could manage it. This was before my health got dicey again and I had a lot less time and energy to devote to it. I did start transitioning to dictation again, mostly to speed up the process, and I’m still working out the kinks.
I had a deadline for Reaper Girl #3, The Vanishing. January 1st. Which would have been doable…had I had time to finish the draft and revise. I need at least three weeks minimum and that’s pushing it. My drafts change significantly in revision, so I didn’t feel comfortable throwing my fellow TDPers my first draft and hoping we could work it out. December, as a rule, is a crazy month for everyone. I have a lot of commitments and work things to wrap up, so I wasn’t even sure if it was possible. I’d said I’d try. And then everything got busy again, and I knew that if I pushed myself to write/dictate, I’d overdo it and possibly make everything worse. It hurts so much to sit here and say, “I’m not going to write for a month” and I’m blowing my deadline, but I am running on fumes. I’ve been working twelve-hour days for months now with very few days off, if that. My sleep schedule is still messed up, and I would have been stressing about getting my words in. I probably would be staying up later to dictate, after staying up late anyway, and that’s just not healthy long term. So something had to change.
We’d already discussed the idea of handing in the draft as soon as I could. It’s up to 37,000 words of a projected 60,000 words. Just over half. I figured that if I could start strong in January, and get at least 20,000 words in two months, I’ll have a chance of making it.
With that decided, I decided to focus on work and Christmas/New Year’s through December. That’s not to say I can’t write if I feel the urge and have the energy and time, but it eliminates the scrambling and stressing and the negative self-talk. Yes, I am a horrible boss, as one of the TDPers told me last night at our meeting. I don’t leave time for rest, and everyone requires it, especially if you have chronic illnesses like me. I wasn’t taking my own advice from my nonfiction book, Gain with Pain: take a rest. Figure out your new normal. And then determine how much you can do…and what you can’t do.
I don’t want to turn this into a long hiatus. I don’t want to lose momentum. I actually already have, sales wise. That can’t be helped. But personal momentum…it’s still there. Just hiding. And I need to coax it back out when it’s time.
It isn’t time yet.
But January…here I come.