Tuesday, April 5, 2011

the aftermath of my week long writing binge...?

I have these ambitions.

I decided that spring break would be filled to the brim with writing, editing, and publishing... and that happened. I published three books (although I'm going to have to upload a new copy of the third, because I rushed it and then realized I needed to still fix a few things). I finished the first draft of the WiP. I came up with a new story idea. I pretty much drove myself nonstop for ten days (we had a snow day added to the break). It was wildly productive.

And now I'm tired.

I don't regret it. At all. But there's a part of me that's really dissatified with the fact that I can't keep that pace up ALL. THE. TIME.

I decided to make April my personal NaNoWriMo. I planned to come home every day after work and write, like I did in November. That hasn't really happened. Yesterday I came home and took a nap on the couch. Today the hubby took me out to eat, and I'm dreaming of just going to bed right now--and it's 7:30pm.

And I know I'm genuinely tired, because even though I have that whip-cracking inner voice going off about it, it's a very faint voice, and the rest of me can't muster up any energy to care.

I've done the rewrites on the third book. I could take it down from the sites and put the new version up right now. It probably wouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes to do. And then, I could find all the reviewer-blogs I've been collecting and start submitting my books to them like I've been intending. This would be a good marketing step. But it's probably not going to happen tonight.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will make it home earlier from work, and I'll have time for a nap if I need it, and then I'll find the energy to do the new uploads and write some more for ApriNoWriMo.

I think, actually, with ApriNoWriMo, two things are slowing me down. 1) Definitely my fatigue. 2) The story idea. It's not a bad story idea, but it's a new one, totally outside my Veronica series, and as such, I'm not bought in to it yet. I takes me a while to get bought in, which is why I like the NaNo format--I'm in such a rush to get words down by the deadline that by the time the month is over, I've bought in at some point without even noticing. So what I may need to do is come up with Veronica Barry: book 3. One of the lovely things about writing VB: book 2 was that I slipped right in--no initial struggle to form an attachment. That was way cool. So maybe I don't need a break from it, as I had decided when I finished the first draft of book 2 during spring break. Maybe I need a little breather and then to dive right back into Veronica's story...

Something to ponder.

My question to you is, how do you deal with fatigue? Do you ever push yourself very hard and then pay the consequences? How do you handle that, if you do, or avoid that, if you don't? Do you write in series? If so, do you take breaks between each book to write something else, or remain immersed in your series' world?

8 comments:

  1. I can so relate to your desire to keep up the pace, Sophia. But we really must rest our bodies and spirits in order to be productive. Sometimes I can push through a lot of work, but the exhaustion always comes on a burst of writing's heels. So, I try to pace myself.
    I do envy those hardy folks who only need a few hours sleep a night and can run on just coffee. I take good care of myself, vitamins, yoga, rest, in order to be able to be at my best for writing. And then there's always the 'day job' sucking down my energy. I try not to resent it...it buys the groceries and keeps a roof above us...but I do resent it at times. I wish I could write all day, every day!!!

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  2. Me, too!
    I used to do yoga several times a week (sometimes a couple of times a day) and then totally stopped when I went to France for a few months. It just didn't fit there, for some reason. And I have yet to take it back up. But I'd like to. It made me feel so great! It would be nice to look into doing that soon...

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  3. ...has there always been an April NaNo?

    I combat fatigue with a metric fuckton of coffee...which is a smidgen counterproductive in the long run.

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  4. April NaNo: not really. There are some websites here and there that run pseudo-NaNos during some or all of the rest of the months of the year beyond November. From what I can tell, April doesn't come up very often because it's popular for a couple of other challenges: Blogging A-Z, where you do a blog each day with a title that goes with each letter of the alphabet. And PAD, which I think is Poem-A-Day.

    I avoid coffee, myself. I love the smell of it, and I love having a big decadent mocha. But I cannot handle the caffeine, and decaf just isn't the same.

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  5. We should do a pseduo-nano on the forum. Might be fun. We'd have to pick a month, or week, or whatever. *smirk*

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  6. Mary, I would be ALL OVER THAT. Seriously. I'm finding out that trying to just do it by myself isn't happening. Also, I've given myself permission to take this week off writing. So ApriNoWriMo probably isn't going to happen. But we could declare MayNoWriMo!!!

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  7. If you guys had a MayNoWriMo, I'd be interested in jumping on that bandwagon.

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