Well, I won’t lie to you all: this week was a pretty slow week for writing.
That doesn’t mean nothing got done at all, of course. I’ll get into that in a second. But all in all, this week was not the most prolific.
There are several reasons for this, of course, the major one being school. Being a grad student, as I am, late November and early December tend to be a busy time. And this year’s been no exception: between exam prep, thesis proposal work and other assorted errands, I haven’t been left with a lot of time or energy to write.
Apart from that, though, I’ve hit a bit of a burnout period. That’s often how things go with my work ethic, though: I’ll have a few months where I’m consistently hitting at least 2000 and often 3000 words a day, and then, out of nowhere…I just dry up. It’s somewhat inconvenient timing—I would’ve preferred to keep going strong right up until my Christmas break (which at this point is only days away)—but I might need to call it and take my break early. Take a month or so off, then roar back, finish The 2nd Realm (or the first draft, anyway), and then go from there.
Of course, when I say “take a break,” I don’t necessarily mean completely refraining from writing. No, my breaks are more about my state of mind than my actual workload: when I’m “on a break” from writing, I basically take all pressure off myself to hit my daily quota, and instead just write what I feel like, when I feel like it. While I’m with my family over Christmas holidays, I won’t expect myself to write anything: I won’t beat myself up if I get back to it in early January having written nothing. However, if the mood strikes me, and I get the irresistible urge to get something down, I’ll still do it.
That being said, there is one project I might undertake over the holidays, albeit a short one. I caught wind of an anthology being put together called Dragonesque: from what I’ve heard, it’s basically a collection of stories told from a dragon’s point of view (doesn’t matter what sort of dragon, if it’s in a fantasy or a sci-fi setting, etc., just so long as it’s a dragon). Not long after hearing about the anthology, I got kind of a cool idea I think might fit within the 7500-word limit the publisher’s set. Whether I actually write it over these next few weeks has yet to be seen, of course…but even if I don’t get it done before the deadline (December 31), I think I’ll still write this short story. At worst, it’d be something I could market to some of the other fantasy publications out there. Or, if none of them want it, I could even expand the idea into a novel. Who knows?
Of course, if I really feel myself raring to go at some point over the holidays, I might keep working on The 2nd Realm and those other assorted short stories, too. Oh, and the Nightmares Inc. ending…how could I have forgotten about that? If I don’t get much (or anything) done on those, though, I’ll hopefully come back in January with renewed resolve.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for you this week. Next week, since I don’t anticipate being able to give much in the way of an update, I might write a bit about self-publishing (and why I hesitate to take that as an option for getting my work out there). And then, after that, I’ll probably take a couple weeks off from posting here, before resuming in January. Have fun, stay safe, and keep reading.
