It’s a personal frustration to see the NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) every time it starts, which is in November. It always looks like a very inviting challenge, and the online writing community is pretty supportive during that month. Every time I check out my various social media platforms during the month, I see updates from other writers about their projects and their successes.
I am happy for them and their successes. But November is a terrible month for me to write. The winter season is a bad time for me to write. In the Post Office, winter is known as the Heavy Months.
It’s a consequence of how the holidays fall. We have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and several other holidays following right after. Once they’re over, it’s followed by the USA tax season. This is the season that makes or breaks a new-hire, and if they fall out, the rest of us pick up the slack. From October to about April, my average work shift is between 9 and 14 hours. I barely see my family during these months, and on the off-chance I do see them, it’s for maybe 5 minutes. Trying to write after such a shift is an exercise in futility.
I have been better about the effort this past heavy season than I have in previous years. When I had first started in this career, I didn’t even try to write during those months. I would just come home, shower, and fall asleep (in the bed if I was lucky and remembered to walk in that direction). Now, with a decade under my belt and a family to see to, it’s strangely surprising that I have any energy left to try to whack away at a story.
But I am making progress, just not every day like the NaNoWriMo challenge demands of me. I’m tempted to try the challenge during a different month, like May or July, when the mail is light and all I have to worry about is heat prostration.
With all of that said, I’ve actually made decent progress in some of my stories. I’ve almost finished with the first Star Wars RPG adventure, but I’ve realized a different kind of snag in writing: I wasn’t expecting the story to be a real novella. Almost 40 pages so far and I’m not even to the climactic fight.
I’m going to have to break it down into chapters before I post it.
So, it’s back to the late-night attempts to get another 600 words down before exhaustion knocks me out. I’ll be fighting the temptation to just enjoy the fire and read a book.
Swift's Corner 