I can’t think. My mind is blank. No it’s not writer’s block. I blame the drugs. I’m on Wellbutrin so I can stop smoking. I’ve been on it for two weeks now. Still smoking, but increasingly the cigarettes taste bad.
At times I feel like my head will explode.
Why does WordPress insist on putting a tutorial up every single time I start a new post. How annoying.
Tried to do some editing. The more I look at the word “was” the weirder it looks. “The” is running a close second.
Maybe my brain will settle out with Wellbutrin eventually. If not, then I can kiss my writing career gone. I want to stay on Wellbutrin for at least a year so I can have the best chance of not only stop smoking but stay stopped.
The word “stay” is looking a bit dodgy. Kind of looks like staaaaaaaaaayyyy.
I should delete this post. Muhahahahaha! Hell no, we won’t go!
Hold on, massive hot flash coming on.
Whew. Cleared the head a bit. I’m almost afraid to look at what I’ve written so far. Oops, I looked and it is pretty darn weird.
Okay, it’s not just the Wellbutrin. I also overdid it at work today and am exhausted.
I’m sure I’m not the first writer to get a tad emotional about their writing. Yesterday, I had full intent to finish the first draft of “My Cancer Journey”. I could have just listed almost like bullet points the things that happened, but I also wanted this to be somewhat entertaining.
Each major milestone of my journey, I have been writing to show the context of the event. Not only the decision making, but also the emotional aspect. Some of my decisions were purely emotional decisions. Maybe not the best thing to do, but it’s very hard not to do so when you are facing the specter of death.
The emotions are still raw at times. I could run away from them, but I believe by stating them and what was going on, good and bad, it will help me to fully process them. Most of my more emotional moments during the time, I kept hidden from everybody. I still felt them and by acknowledging them, I can get past them. As I write about the decisions and the emotions, I get overwhelmed. It’s like I’m reliving the event.
In other words, I’m slacking as to finishing the first draft. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.
Getting paid for what you are passionate about is probably the best thing in the world. I say probably, because up till now I haven’t been paid for my writings. I enjoy writing and also the editing and revising just for the sheer joy of creating something that brings a bit of enjoyment to the reader. Getting paid would be a validation of sorts but is not my main goal.
I get an weekly email from Authors Publish Magazine. If you are a writer and have not seen this website, I highly recommend you go there now. Yes, NOW!
They scour the internet for opportunities for writers to be published. Also they have great free books on writing, editing, publishing and marketing. Today’s email had a bit of a surprise for me.
I don’t think I’m ready for a Patreon page, but there were two alternatives that I had never heard of: Ko-fi and Buy Me A Coffee. I did a quickie look and they seem like something that I might do in the near future. They also looked like a lot of work getting it set up that would not be any where near as enjoyable as writing.
If anybody has experience with the above three, I would love to hear about it, good and bad.
Decided to forgo writing on my NaNo book tonight. Instead I started a new story called, “My Cancer Journey”. It is a memoir of sorts. Tonight, I wrote an astounding 2,600 words. I’m maybe a third of the way through the story. I plan on editing and revising and polishing it up after I finish the first draft. Then I’ll post it on here in a new page as it is rather lengthy for a normal post.
I decided to write this because of two things. One, I want to keep the posts on the blog more focused on writing. I’ll still do health updates when warranted on the blog. Secondly, I felt that I needed to chronicle my Cancer Journey.
I do not want it to be a bullet point of things that have happened. That is not only boring to me, but most likely boring to anyone who would dare attempt to read it. Instead, I’m going for the story telling aspect. I’m also adding in how I felt at the time as best that I remember it. Throwing in a few anecdotes to keep things interesting and to advance the story. Right now, I’m projecting the story to be about 8,000 words. It could grow to much more to keep it not only interesting but informative.
Of course, my journey is not complete, so the story will grow as time goes on. Between you and me, I’m hoping on a happy ending. Otherwise, the story will end abruptly and be most unsatisfying to the reader, but especially for me as I’ll probably be taking a very long dirt nap.
The NaNo book? Oh yeah, with me switching to Cancer Journey story, I believe I’ll clear my head and find a way to advance the NaNo book story at a later date. The pressure of writing every day and making a set amount of words is stifling to my creativity.
Writing to me is a joy and a deep pleasure. When I craft a perfect sentence, a perfect paragraph, it’s sublime. Then I go back and edit it again and again and like magic, it’s even better. NaNo took the joy and pleasure out of writing for me. It became a chore, a drudgery and killed my wonder of creating a story.
I’ll not begrudge nor regret attempting NaNo, as I felt I’ve learnt quite a bit about my writing process. It has helped me to see where I need to focus and most of all, to appreciate my writing.
At the end of week 2, I had 17,446 words written. This week I wrote a measly 2,835 words which brings me to a total of 20,281 words written. Holy sweet jeebus! 20k words?
That’s a huge milestone for me. I’m pretty darn proud of that.
As you can see though, my production has dropped greatly this week. I did not write on Saturday and I’ve not written today and have no plans to do so. I’m feeling a bit burnt out right now and need to give it a rest.
Before I started this, I had realized that I’m more of a short story type of writer. I decided to do NaNo in order to accomplish two things. Get myself into the habit of writing and to see if I had the chops to write a book. More and more, I’m realizing that writing books is not my style at least for now. I will finish this book and will attempt to finish strong this week. Doing another book after this is definitely not on the horizon.
I’m looking forward to December when I can officially stop work on the book and go back to what I enjoy doing which is dreaming up quirky, fun, and strange short stories. After an unknown amount of time, I’ll go back to finishing this book. I hope I’ll have the motivation to work on it before NaNo 2022. If not, I can try NaNo again and finish the damn book.
Well that’s interesting. I just figured out if I wrote 3,333 words everyday for 9 days, I can still “Win” NaNo with a total of 50k words. Ha-ha! Famous last words and all that rot.
My plan was to write everyday not only on my novel to be, but also on this blog. I also planned on writing 50k words this month on the novel. So how am I doing?
Quite frankly, the plan has been folded, spindled and mutilated. My word count for the novel is abysmal this week, which is surprising as I had looked forward to this section of the book. I did not write anything on the novel yesterday.
After making a post for 32 days straight, I’m back to square one. I took yesterday off and did not write anything. Well, I did make a semi-lengthy comment on Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise. But other than that, nothing, nada, zilch.
Am I getting burned out? I’m not sure. It could be a combination of burnout with health issues. Or I’m just procrastinating due to the deep inner desire to sabotage myself if it looks like I’m succeeding due to fear. More than likely, I just felt like taking a lazy day.
On Monday, I submitted my YA(?) story and just as I was sitting down to write this post, I get an email with a rejection. This is not just a form rejection and it actually helps.
Thank you for submitting “There Be Dragons” to Cast of Wonders. We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Our readers felt the story was more appropriate for a middlegrade audience than the 12-17 year old target age group of Cast of Wonders. We did, however, think it had a great concept and was well written. There are lots of articles out there on key differences between the two genres – here’s one we like: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-key-differences-between-middle-grade-vs-young-adult
Submitting to the right market is key and now I understand a bit more where I should be looking. I’ll be looking for a new place to submit it that is more appropriate.
I hope to get back to writing on the novel today and get back to writing each day a decent amount of words to progress. Tonight I’ll post my NaNo weekly update.
After going through the bout of possible liver failure and the extreme lethargy associated with it, I feel really good. Also I’ve changed my diet to limit Carbs to between 50-100 a day and cut out processed sugar as much as possible. My stamina seems stronger this week, but is it really?
The human body is amazing at what it can get used to. Right now, there is a war in my body between the Chemo and the cancer cells. Innocent cells are dying right along with cancer cells as collateral damage. I’m at the end of the 3 month cycle of Lupron shots. From the last ending of the cycle, I was steadily getting more and more tired each day. I had hoped that with the change in diet, it wouldn’t be as bad, but then again, see the first sentence of this post.
This week is a short work week. Wednesday will probably be a short day. Thursday I’m off as it is a paid holiday. Friday is going to be interesting as it will be a short day also, but we will have about 1/2 of the employees off that day. I’m going to get a shot at counter sales that day. After a year and a half immersing myself in plumbing products, I think I’m ready to step up to the next level and do sales. I’ve never done sales and in fact have always run as far and fast as I can away from sales.
At work, I’ve been shifted to primarily be a delivery driver. I’m driving a 30 foot box truck. Loading and unloading the truck can be difficult and hard, but the driving is pretty easy. While driving today, I thought of how to proceed with my new found villain. I came up with three options.
Option A: Villain inwardly hates being the bad guy and ends up joining my band of soldiers against the state.
Option B: Villain pretends to hate the state and tries to integrate with the soldiers in order to gather evidence to throw them into prision.
Option C: Villain is simply a bad guy out for the blood of the soldiers.
When I got home from work, I opened up my document and thought about how to write Option A. I couldn’t do it. I stared for a while at the page on my screen. This option sucked. I took a little break to clear my head and sat down to do Option B. Again, I couldn’t do it. There was no way to start this part that made even the least bit of sense. Off to take another break to clear my head.
Option C seemed the most promising when I was going over scenarios earlier today. However, I struck out once again.
Now it’s getting late, and I dearly want to show some progress on the book everyday and also write a post on this blog everyday. I took a shower and it came to me. I need to go to Option D. Who saw that coming? Option D is to start a new chapter and shift the Point of View from my Main Character to the Point of View of the villain.
I wrote a quick page and a half in fifteen minutes. Then on to write this post. Now I have less than five minutes to update my book progress on NaNoWriMo and publish this post. Nothing gets the adrenaline going as good as when you are pushing the deadline.
Last night, tired as I was, I managed to bang out almost a thousand words on my book. In the process, I discovered my villain for Part 2. This is why I like writing without an outline. The story can surprise me as I write. I have a general idea where to start and where to end, but the middle is a mystery to me until I start writing.
Why do I need a villain? Simply put, I like to have action in the book. Action without something opposing it is like watching someone do Parkour. Fun to watch and amazing, but after a while I get bored with it.
In Part 2, I really enjoyed the beginning, but when I got into it more, it was getting a bit boring for me. Even the action part which comprises all of Chapter 2, 3 and 4. The end of Chapter 4 introduced the villain and in Chapter 5 the villain strikes! By Chapter 6, it will look like all is lost. After that, I have no idea. But Part 2 will end about Chapter 8.
Had another long day. So far in four days of work this week, I have amassed 43 hours of work. Still have one more to go tomorrow. My paycheck should be pretty darn good.
Haven’t started writing tonight on the book. I plan to after dinner. Don’t know how much I’ll write, but I’m determined to write everyday this month on the book.
Writing with Cancer 