Recovery time

After having the plague for the last two weeks… Okay, not the plague, but it damn well felt like the plague. But after being sick, I find myself way behind for NaNoWriMo. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you’re curious, I did a vlog for Week Two of NaNoWriMo you can check out.

So the title for this blog post is appropriate, for more than one reason. One, because I was sick, and now I’m starting to feel better and get my strength back. And two, because now I need to recover my NaNoWriMo writing streak.

It’s been three days since I wrote anything. I hit a hard point in Project Zodiac, and I was attributing it to reaching the second act in my story. And while that’s partially it, it was also because I have been pushing through being sick and I haven’t given myself time to recover.

So I took a couple of days to rest and chill and I’m trying not to feel guilty about this. I’m trying not to see it as a weakness and instead see it as something I need to do to continue being creative and taking care of myself.

I’m still struggling with Project Zodiac, so I think I’m going to switch up projects. Mostly to maintain the habit of writing every day or almost every day. I think Project Zodiac needs a little bit of a percolation time.

So I’m gonna let it do its magic in the background and open up Project Storm (formerly known as Storm Born #1–because why should I pick real titles? LOL) and work on that book for a bit. I mean, that’s the book I was originally going to write for NaNo. Why not now? LOL.

For those of you working hard on your NaNo goals, make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well. Don’t burn yourself out because then you miss the whole point of this challenge. Writing consistently. Finishing the story.

Maybe 1,667 words a day is too much to handle for your current situation. That’s okay. If you write 200 words a day, you’re still writing, still creating. You’re still building that solid habit of creative output. When finding the time to write is a struggle, keeping up that habit is important, more important than the number of words you get on the page.

Now, if only I could tell myself that and believe it.

But we’re hardest on ourselves, aren’t we?