In Which I Write a Lot of Words Rambling About Writing a Lot of Words

“30 days, 30k words. Yeah, I can do this.”
That was my ever optimistic (if not a bit impractical) self at the beginning of June.

“I can’t do thisssss.”
My much more realistic side kicked in come mid-June.

“Maybe I can do this?”
Nearing the end of June. Hopeful? Wishful thinking? Anyone’s guess.

“Nope, not gonna make— Wait. Did I just hit my word goal?”
Last days of June. Too exhausted to even realize that I HIT 30K WORDS.

Ahem. So yes. June has been a bit of a hectic whirlwind of words and life and other stuff I probably don’t even remember at this point because it all went swhoosh and left me dizzy, and now it’s almost July.

You see, at the very end of May I up and decided I would do a little JuNoWriMo thingamajig and set a goal of 30k words for June. I had been somewhat steadily working on Burning Thorns but it wasn’t coming along as fast as I had hoped. I needed a push, so setting a goal and announcing it and having people keeping me accountable would be that perfect push. I’m a bit (okay, maybe more than a bit) OCD when it comes to goals. Once I make it “official” I HAVE to achieve that goal. Even if I die because of it, it’s worth it. I’m an all or nothing sorta person. Literally. If I don’t think I can make a goal, I just won’t even set it in the first place. But once it’s there it’s set in stone and a stampede of rabid dinosaurs cannot drag me away and make me quit. I’ve yet to decide if this is a good or bad thing.

That being said, this JuNo challenge I set for myself was supposedly not going to be a big deal. I do a double NaNo every November after all. Psh, I can do this. Besides, summer is a hot, lazy time where I just want to hide under the air conditioner with my laptop anyway. It’ll be fun!

Yeeeah, that was my thought process at the beginning of the month.

By halfway I’m pretty sure that dinosaur stampede had run me through half a dozen times over.

THIS. MONTH. WAS. CRAZY.

Why was it crazy? That’s the problem. I don’t even knoooow. It just WAS. A huge chunk of the first half was spent cleaning because we had some family we never get to see come over one weekend. Then there was a family reunion the next weekend. And most importantly a whole lot of watching of the ABC show Once Upon a Time had to be done ‘cause we’re all rewatching it right now. What do you mean that’s not important? Of course it is. *cough, cough, cough*

Anyways. Something happened this month because it all turned into a hectic blur and I could hardly keep my head above water. Or above stampeding dinosaurs, whatever the case may be. My inbox exploded, I struggled to keep up with all meh favorite blogging buddies and delightful blog posts, June just collapsed into a pile of STUFF that I couldn’t seem to climb out of.

Oh yeah, and I was also writing, wasn’t I?

The no-big-deal challenge turned into a goal of stress I barely could keep up with. It was a struggle to even write 1k words a day. Let’s just say there were a lot of late nights of writing and catching up on things. Sleep is overrated anyway, right? . . .Right? Honestly, for a bit there I wondered if I would make my 30k goal. But I was calm and collected. I told myself that the point in the challenge was not a certain number of words written, but merely to write. And I was writing every chance I got, so I already won.

HAHAHAHA! Just kidding. Okay, okay. Part of me did know that. After all, the goal was to get myself writing and it was working. But the much bigger voice in my head kept drowning out the reasonable one with its screams of, “IF YOU DON’T MAKE THIS GOAL YOU’RE A FAILURE.” Why must the reasonable voices be so quiet?

Needless to say, despite the frantic rush of whatever busyness that kept happening this month, I kept writing. And writing.

Then, yesterday, as I was consumed in the story and both laughing and scowling over Larke’s antics (because he seems determined to take over the story), I happened to glance down at my wordcount and, what was this? I HAD MADE MY WORD GOAL. 30k words for the month had been written!

*cue the flailing and celebrating and huge ol’ sigh of relief*

I MADE IT!!!! Now I can relax and breathe a little and just be lazy for July and—

You know, I’m not too terribly far from the end of this story.

Okay, okay. Back up. So I stressed myself out ALL of June but dealt with it because I knew once July came I could BREATHE. I just had to make it to July. And now I’m considering keeping this up until I get to the end of the book?

Sure! Why not?

Yes, I’m crazy and quite possibly will be dead by the time I finish this novel, BUT, I do have good reasons for continuing this mad dash of writing. For one, well, I’m really not too far from the end. Just ten chapters left to go I believe. I think I can manage that. Also, I’m kind of in the habit of writing every day now, it’s become routine, so why not keep it up? And I LOVE writing endings, they’re my favorite, and this ending I’m particularly looking forward to so I don’t think it’ll be grueling work.

But my main push to reach that ending is because I have another writing project in mind. I seem incapable of working on two writing projects at once. I don’t know why, but whenever I try I end up abandoning one to completely focus on the other. Since I’m so close to the end of Burning Thorns it’d be kind of silly to drop it now for something else. Buuuut there’s that tantalizing Rooglewood Press Sleeping Beauty Novella contest (wow, that was a mouthful) going on and it keeps nudging my brain whispering, “Do me, do me, do meee!” So I thought to myself, if I finish up Burning Thorns pretty soon I would totally have time to work on a Sleeping Beauty novella. That’s reasonable, right? I may end up overwhelming myself and decide to just take a break and not worry about joining in on the Rooglewood contest. But as of right now I’m much more leaning toward attempting it.

So, instead of the totally lazy July I probably should give myself, it’ll most likely be another explosion of words. Though I’m expecting (okay, maybe ‘hoping’ would be a better word) that July won’t be the erupting volcano of activity that was June and allow for more writing time. Though writing won’t be the only thing I’ll be doing. I’m still buried under a mound of stuff that sneakily piled up while I was distracted this June and is now crushing me. It is my hope I can spend the next couple of weeks sweeping it all away. I mean, you should see my inbox. Actually, you probably don’t want to. It’s as messy as a toddler given free, unsupervised reign over a whole chocolate cake. Yeah, I should probably do something about that.

One of the things I do hope I can find time for this next month is READ. Do you know I didn’t really even read half a book in all of June? THE HORROR!!! I have like over 50 books just BEGGING me to gobble up, and instead I hardly touched one. I miss reading. I NEED to read.

And, ya know, if I ever end this seemingly never ending rambling blog post I might actually have TIME to go do all these things that need doing. If you actually read all that, bless you. Have some cake, because I know you want some now. *passes around cake*

Long story short: I wrote words, dinosaurs tried to crush me but I came out TRIUMPHANT, and July will probably be a month spent playing the catch-up game (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with ketchup).

The real question is: Do I regret doing JuNo? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Due to the insanity of this month I think I would have hardly gotten a single word written normally. But because of that push, I made time for writing anyway. Sure, there were many days I really, really wished I didn’t have to write. But I did, and while before this goal I was still near the beginning of the novel, I’m now approaching the end. I call that a success!

Good gravy, enough of the rambly Christine-ness. I want to hear about YOUR June. What’ve you been up to? Any writing projects going? Anybody already working on their Sleeping Beauty novella? And what are your July plans? Oh, can we also talk about the fact that WE’RE HALFWAY THROUGH THE YEAR???