Done. Thank goodness. I know, I know. It’s only six days in and it was five or six chapters. At my rate of course it’s done.
You just haven’t been inside my head around December before, especially when I’m having problems at work.
I had a tension headache until Sunday. Might have had one of my episodes, but it wasn’t as bad as usual. Normally I check out mentally and I’m basically just this hull of a person.
If that sounds familiar to you, don’t worry, I’m aware of what it could mean. But try to get a doctor to check it. They won’t unless you go while in an episode and even then they won’t get the equipment in time to check and they act like you’re lying or something.
To which I’d end up staring mutely at them because my words fail me.
Why is that important? Well, if I was about to have an episode it explains my weird writing experiences just before. I was forgetting words and bumbling all kinds of stuff. I’d think “I’ve” and spell ‘ivory’ and there were a couple times where I thought one thing and something else entirely came out.
It’s possible that I wrote what I heard on the television instead of what I wanted to write. For me, writing is rarely about the images anymore. It’s a narration inside my own head, like I’m taking down the words of someone else. So writing what I hear on my shows instead of what I want wouldn’t be overly surprising.
The first couple of days was a struggle. One chapter over three days, this too is expected of an episode.
I think I wrote a total of six chapters. Approximately 20,000 words. Most of those were yesterday.
Normally after an episode, the words will die for a few days to a week. It can be so bad that speaking hurts in an all over way like I’m holding in the written word. Once that passes I see a sudden surge where I spend a day writing something like 23k words. I’ll stay with a manic word count for a bit then level right off.
But it’s December. Work will leave me hollowed out, emotionally and mentally exhausted. My workload has more than quadrupled but I have the same amount of time to do it. They say there’s a balance to those hours but… come on.
I’m hoping to get Boxing Day off. I’m also hoping to finish Contract Given this month. It’s a project that is outside of the others. I know I’m not supposed to be writing, but it’s a novella and I’m not going to use that for a project month. It’d be cheating.
December is the only month that I thought I might need a break. But when you go from 50k to 20k words in six days, yeah, you need that break.
I’m taking this weekend off writing and have no idea what I’m going to do with myself. Besides do the cleansing of the apartment that I always do in December. This time I’m going to wash walls and ceiling too, to get rid of the mold and hopefully the ants and to assess whether the ceiling is actually going to come down or if it’s just plaster cracking.
Five more months and I am moving…
Anyhow, officially done.
2 of 12 complete
Word count approximately 107,000 or about 53,500 per project.
Total writing days: 16
Or about 6,688 words a day.
Aya DeAniege 