It's June. It's a new beginning for me in the middle of the year. The US is a huge mess of protests and looting and I'm stuck at home due to curfew (in So Cal, our curfew starts at 4 pm) and coronavirus and all I can think about is how to proceed so I can become a productive member of society and beat my looming depression. I got physically sick looking at some of the looting footages the past few days, and decided today I'm going to limit my news exposure. I watched the governor spoke and periodically checked on our local news station, but that's about it. I browsed reddit for the news before, but now most of the threads went from informative about streams and other protest times to name calling and race baiting, so I'm just going to quit that altogether too.
Anyway, onto the topic of battling my looming depression. The first step, I think, is to be completely honest with myself about my work and see where I really am, not where I fool myself thinking or wish I am. I like to say that I'm on draft 1.5 of my novel, where the majority is sorted out except for one major plotline which I have to completely rewrite, but I'd be lying to myself. It's not one major plotline to be fixed, it's all of them, and the majority need to be actually written down in a cohesive manner. So I don't really have a novel on paper, I only have an outline on paper, some rambling incoherent bits, and the majority of it is still only in my head. That's where I am. So it's not draft 1.5, not even close.
HOWEVER, it's not all doom and gloom. Because it's not draft .5 either, because at the beginning I had a lot of logistic issues, and I have got those more or less sorted out. In my head, yes, but they're sorted out. I know my characters better now, I know the plot better now, so it's not all a loss these past six years. But absolutely none of that is on paper yet, and that is a major, major issue. And that is what I need to address, now. Again, not all is lost, but a whole lot more needs to be found. 90-95%, and I'm being completely honest.
So how much of the novel do I really have? Well, I have 3 chapters. Yep. Total of 3 passable chapters, with a whole lot of not passable chapters, but 3 that's semi-passable. Two I've written last month. That's how pathetic I was. Am. Whatever, no time for self pity but motivation. My book will have 3 sections with about 10 chapters each. So yeah, I have about 10% done. In 6 years. Yikes, huh? I can blame it on a lot of things but at this point there's really zero excuse. I need a drastic intervention. From myself, for myself, by myself. It's why I sometimes compare my particular strain of writer's block to alcoholism. I even started a written journal based after AA books to try to get through it, and what do you know it actually magically helped. Until my recent fall into depression, that is. But I guess it just means I need more of a push and get myself back on track then.
It's alright though. Now that I'm being super honest and assessing realistically, I can move forward. I already set a goal of getting 5 new chapters done by the end of this month, which would make it 8 chapters total, which meant in a month and a half I'll be done with the first section. (Yeah that's the plan but...good luck to me lol!) It's still early in the day (3 pm), so after I post this entry I can at least go on and fix some of the chapters I've already written. Yes, I know I said last time no editing, but you know, I also said that seems nigh unrealistic for me, so I will try to do minimum editing instead. Contain it to a section, fix it, and then go on and write something else new without editing, and the next day edit the new section and push on. Might work, might backfire, never know until I try, yeah?
Anyway, onto the topic of battling my looming depression. The first step, I think, is to be completely honest with myself about my work and see where I really am, not where I fool myself thinking or wish I am. I like to say that I'm on draft 1.5 of my novel, where the majority is sorted out except for one major plotline which I have to completely rewrite, but I'd be lying to myself. It's not one major plotline to be fixed, it's all of them, and the majority need to be actually written down in a cohesive manner. So I don't really have a novel on paper, I only have an outline on paper, some rambling incoherent bits, and the majority of it is still only in my head. That's where I am. So it's not draft 1.5, not even close.
HOWEVER, it's not all doom and gloom. Because it's not draft .5 either, because at the beginning I had a lot of logistic issues, and I have got those more or less sorted out. In my head, yes, but they're sorted out. I know my characters better now, I know the plot better now, so it's not all a loss these past six years. But absolutely none of that is on paper yet, and that is a major, major issue. And that is what I need to address, now. Again, not all is lost, but a whole lot more needs to be found. 90-95%, and I'm being completely honest.
So how much of the novel do I really have? Well, I have 3 chapters. Yep. Total of 3 passable chapters, with a whole lot of not passable chapters, but 3 that's semi-passable. Two I've written last month. That's how pathetic I was. Am. Whatever, no time for self pity but motivation. My book will have 3 sections with about 10 chapters each. So yeah, I have about 10% done. In 6 years. Yikes, huh? I can blame it on a lot of things but at this point there's really zero excuse. I need a drastic intervention. From myself, for myself, by myself. It's why I sometimes compare my particular strain of writer's block to alcoholism. I even started a written journal based after AA books to try to get through it, and what do you know it actually magically helped. Until my recent fall into depression, that is. But I guess it just means I need more of a push and get myself back on track then.
It's alright though. Now that I'm being super honest and assessing realistically, I can move forward. I already set a goal of getting 5 new chapters done by the end of this month, which would make it 8 chapters total, which meant in a month and a half I'll be done with the first section. (Yeah that's the plan but...good luck to me lol!) It's still early in the day (3 pm), so after I post this entry I can at least go on and fix some of the chapters I've already written. Yes, I know I said last time no editing, but you know, I also said that seems nigh unrealistic for me, so I will try to do minimum editing instead. Contain it to a section, fix it, and then go on and write something else new without editing, and the next day edit the new section and push on. Might work, might backfire, never know until I try, yeah?
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