Writing during an Emotional Upheaval

When I'm sad, it doesn't feel like an everyday sadness. I consider every little thing I do and whether it's worth getting up for. Even going to the bathroom. I feel like I'm going into debt by spending the effort it takes to do anything. I want to sink deep inside my mind, beneath the surface, and never come back up again.

I withdraw from everyone, including myself. Writing during these periods is a painful process. I don't like expending the mental energy and struggling through a story when standing does me in. I'm getting better at it, though--controlling my emotions and writing through intense negative emotions. Not writing becomes too easy, and I need to take away all of my excuses.

So I've stopped saying, "I don't feel like it" or "Ugh, I can't concentrate on that right now." That doesn't make much sense because the alternative is to continue to feel bad or to dwell on feeling bad. Writing gets me out of my skin and into someone else, a character who will soon be going through an ordeal much worse than mine. *wink wink*

Writing is a part of my life now, and just like my family, God, and exercise, I can't push it aside whenever I'm feeling down. I need to let it use me so that I can think on things outside of myself. Then I'll find myself feeling not so bad after all.

Week of Jan 13, 2013: An Obvious Thing...

I Learned about Writing.

Those different kinds of plots (Request, Revenge, Supplication, etc.)? I can use them in small-scale situations as well as for the overall plot. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. I can have, for example, a small act of revenge that covers just a subplot, a series of scenes, just one scene, or part of a scene. I'm always struggling to come up with plot complications, and they were right in front of me all along. I feel silly.

Getting to My Goals

I have made myself a goal of writing a million words of fiction. What doesn't count: poetry, non-fiction, work I do for others, or notes. Fiction prose only.

However, I'm not a very patient person. If I continue at the rate I have been, I won't reach 1 million words for six years. I set this goal so that I will improve my writing, and after that I can really push and experiment with stories. Six years is a long time to wait, just to really begin writing.

Therefore, my new sub-goal is to write 50,000 words a month for 12 months, for a total of...(grabs calculator) 600,000 words. That, added to the hundred thousand I've written since making this goal would put me very close to my overall goal.

So far, I'm not doing so good. December crapped out for me at 15K, but January is looking okay. In two days I'll be over the 15K that took me a whole month to do before. I have to write every day without procrastinating (I love procrastination! It's my favorite country) or letting my emotional turmoil or schedule get in the way of sitting down and getting it out.

The first thing I have learned about setting myself goals is that I need to make them just over realistic bounds because I always fall short. But falling short of 50K means that I got some writing done. In the end, that's all that counts.