The Day After

After an interesting deviation on Saturday from my usual subject, we're back to the usual reflecting that you've all come to know and love, or at the very least, expect from me in my self-serving little slice of the Internet.

A lot of my posts over the past few weeks dealt with my anxiety that it would be hard to will myself to write once the blog requirement and NaNoWriMo had both passed. Now, I don't really feel like I have anything further to add on those subjects, since I talked about them at length, perhaps even longer than I really needed. If that's the case, well, that's unfortunate, because tonight I want to talk a bit about what it's like writing in my post NaNoWriMo, post-required blog world.

It's definitely harder. Not to write so much, because the difficult of writing is a laughably complex thing to considers. Some days, the writing is easy. Some days, it isn't, and there are a whole slew of reasons why that may be, all of which may be different, related to each other or not, justified or insane, in whatever absurd combination life decides is the most amusing. What was I saying?

Oh, right, forcing myself to sit down and write. You've already seen this a little bit with the blog, that I fell off my usual schedule a little bit after the requirement had passed. I wouldn't say I've failed to remain consistent, however, after all, I'm here now, aren't I, and if you look back at the archives, 21 posts a month seems to be the target goal. Not sure why it turned out to be twenty-one for both September and October. One would assume that since the goal was five posts a week, and those months have different numbers of days, then... you know what, never mind. Post count isn't the point here.

Tonight was the first night post-NaNoWriMo, although, yes, I realize that since today is still November, it won't actually end until tomorrow. But tonight was the first night for me after reaching that goal of 50,000 words, so tonight was really the first night where I didn't "have" to write any longer. The crunch time is over, right? The story may not be done, but that's okay, now I can go at whatever pace I want, right? I can relax, and all that.

Sounds reasonable, except that I know that I really, really can't. Because if I relax, I'll backslide. I haven't missed a day of writing yet, and it makes me feel great, it makes me feel like the genuine article, a writer plying his trade as opposed to a pirate who doesn't do anything. That's a metaphor, by the way, well, technically a trope; I'm not actually trying to suggest that I was in danger of being a digital pirate or anything.

I think that the biggest reason why today was so much harder than yesterday is because now my goal has changed. I reached that 50k milestone, that 50k in 30 days, and just like that, suddenly all the pressure is off, all the constraints that forced me to work even when I was sick, that made me sit here and do work when I wanted to slack off and play Dragon Age on my Xbox, that's all gone. When I had the 50k looming over me, I knew if I was behind or not, if I was getting as much work done as I needed to be doing on any given day. I always knew that I had a target number to shoot for, roughly 1670 words per day, which meant that I knew when I was under for the daily requirement, and what days I surpassed it.

I don't think I can exist under this new deadline; instead of "write 50,000 words in thirty days," it seems to be now that I have to "okay, now write words until the story is finished." But that's an empty goal, it's unfocused, it's a race where I don't really know where the finish line is. How do I know if I'm getting close? How do I know if I'm doing well? I'm not going to allow myself to read back over what I've done, because then I start to self-edit and the project dies. I need those milestones to strive towards, I need those bulls-eyes to aim at. It can't just be "write till the story is done."

The problem is, I don't really know what the new goal should be. Do I try for another 50k in 30 days? I don't know if "Fallen" has enough story left to be told in another 50,000 words, I mean, it's entirely possible, but I don't know if it'll mesh with the story arc if this point that was supposed to be near the climax instead just becomes the half-way point. On the other hand, I do still have a lot of ideas, some of which I haven't even begun to explore in this current work. On the other other hand (because I totally have three hands) those ideas might be better served in, say, a sequel to the current story, rather than just adding it on to this one.

It's annoying to be in this strange little place, because it's at once both complicated and simple. I'll be the first to say that it shouldn't matter whether I'm trying to write 1670 words a day or just reach 50,000 in thirty days, because it still produces the same result. The problem, however, is that my mind is a very, very weird thing and it needs all kinds of cajoling and elaborate mental games in order to be as productive as it has been. Clearly, the 50k in 30 days was a good idea, because it worked. Will telling myself that I have a daily goal of 1670 words work as well? I don't know. I've tried it before, and I always gave up after a few days. But that was also before I began this blog and this novel. Maybe now, I'm different enough that it won't make a difference?

This post has already run on for longer than I intended, but that's the problem when I write about a problem that I don't yet have an answer for. At the moment, I think a weekly goal is a good medium, since I don't quite know whether or not Fallen will make it to 100,000 words (God, can you even imagine? My first book, which remains the single largest thing I've ever done clocked in at about 88,000 words and the sequel was somewhere around 76,000 words, the latter of which remains unfinished at the moment.) So perhaps a modest goal of 10,000 words per week, which is a little bit less than the NaNoWriMo pace will suffice. I do think I need the target number, since for some reason, over this past month, I found it very helpful for getting my ass into gear when I'd look at a calendar and be able to tell myself "okay, by November 24th, I should have this many words written for the story."

I don't know why my brain forces me to do this. And on an unrelated, I actually had no idea that I'd reached 76k in the sequel to my first novel. I thought it was like 50 or 60k. Man, I should really go back and try to finish that, at some point. Or maybe not, I don't know... I'm not sure whether it would be better to let that old relic remain in my past, or whether it'd be worth it to try and finish it.

We'll see what happens. For the immediate future, however, I know what my current priority is: finishing my current novel!

It feels really, really good to say that again.