End of the Year Wrap Up

Hello everyone.

It’s another week in the post-NaNoWriMo world, and I’m still in the midst of writing the first draft to Between the Maws & Claws. This has been an odd time writing. I feel like I’m back in college, not in my freshman year, not in my senior year, closer to the end than the start, but still feeling like the end is nowhere in sight.

I think some of this just has to do with the time of the year. The end of the year is always a bit of a struggle for me, and I do feel that my writing isn’t escaping this. I’m very anal retentive in trying to keep things ordered and compartmentalized, and I always prefer to have things that I’m working on get wrapped up by the end of the year. I really like having the sense of a fresh start to each new year with everything.

Last year, I was trying to wrap up finishing listening to Words of Radiance, part two in The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson, and I still had about 20 hours to listen to going into the final week of the year, as well as trying to finish Dragon Quest XI, a long RPG, and for fun, in the final week I decided to start playing Shovel Knight again with the goal of beating it. Everything felt like a rush at the end of the year to complete everything.

This year, everything’s a bit more laid back. I’m in the process of finishing Rhythm of War, book four in The Stormlight Archives, with a much more manageable amount to listen to that I’ve got plenty of time to finish, and I’ve still got the first draft to finish, with a week’s vacation to end the year and focus on it.

I know that this seems like I should have it pretty easy compared to last year, and I definitely do. But last year, one of the things I wasn’t trying to wrap up before the new year was the completion of a first draft. I feel like this is just another sign that participating in future NaNoWriMo’s isn’t going to be a given, as I don’t like the idea of feeling the pressure to finish before the end of the year when I’m working on a crucial first draft. 

If I expect my manuscript is going to be novella length, as it was with I’m Not My Father, I expect NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to tackle it. But if I’m going to be writing something that’s going to be closer to the average length of a book, I believe I’ll be giving myself an earlier start in the year to make sure I accomplish it with plenty of time to spare.

The goods news is this past week hasn’t been completely negative. I’ve experienced a rush of new story ideas that I feel are promising and really want to sit down to write. Although it never works out this way, I really like the concepts and could see them being the next books that I release, and as a writer, you never feel like you have enough of these.

Happy holidays everyone.

Until next time.