Okay, I may have gotten a little burnt out. I think it’s as much trying to push myself to write every day without fail that bumps up my headache-prone tension level as it is not taking days off. Normally when I’m ghostwriting I tend to work six days a week and then not at all Sundays (unless of course I had to take a day mid-week for a migraine, in which case I work the Sunday instead). That has been the best working schedule I have been able to work out for my current functional level. Not taking those days off and pushing myself to do more during the day, every day, and try to motivate others in my writing circles… it wasn’t the greatest idea, and it has worn me out. Next NaNo I may try to set up a similar schedule to my work schedule, with only a token amount of writing on the days off to keep my streak going.
Health
As I already said, I’m pretty burnt out. I haven’t done too badly, at least in my opinion, because the headache I had was just tension, not a true migraine that would lay me low for a day or three. I’ll take what I can get. I’ve also managed to get several doctor’s appointments wrapped up and scheduled a treatment plan that I expect will help me a good deal, so I’m feeling pretty optimistic about that. I just need to slow down for the last few days of November so I don’t tip myself into another headache.
Of course the weather had to be warmer just when I needed to start using my heating pad for low back issues. It’s rather unpleasant to be hot and sweaty when it’s below 60F and not moving. I should be better at doing my simple qi gong routine in spite of things like back pain, but I’m really not. It’s a struggle to make myself start doing it again, and if I start too soon I just end up making my back worse.
Happiness
I’ve really enjoyed writing a fantasy romance project that came out of nowhere in the first week of NaNo. It was one of those ideas that tend to happen as soon as you’re trying to focus on your NaNoWriMo project, and I started writing it expecting it to be a short story for my blog. I’m now over 25k into it, and it’s definitely not going to be short. I’ve barely scratched the surface. (This is the story I mentioned last week when I loaded 12k or so into Scrivener to start working on it as a novel instead of random scenes.) I’m absolutely loving it. I like the way both characters (the romantic partners) have started revealing more of their gooey centers to one another in private, even if they aren’t very open in public with anything yet. I think that’s going to play a role in what the heroine’s job will be as more plot happens and the hero’s job gets more complex. I’m not certain where it’s going still, but little things like that are starting to register, so I am getting some idea where the plot may lead. I am really pleased with the way this started, because while it throws you straight into the action, it also prevents a whole lot of forward plot progress at the same time (the heroine was very sick and has to spend time recovering), which makes it easier to design the fantasy setting I’m completely making up on the fly.
Best Moment of the Week
I hit 50k last Sunday. I’m writing still, but there’s something about reaching a goal and celebrating that sticks with you. I’ve had a boring day immediately afterward where I’m not going to admit how few words I wrote on Monday, but that was probably just recovery time because I was so nuts the day before. Oddly enough, I’ve also had 5k-word days, but those don’t have recovery time. Not sure if that’s because I probably had a major brainwave to hit 5k, so didn’t struggle to put words on the page that pushed me harder than necessary, or if there’s some other reason. Maybe I just spaced out my writing better. I know I did on Thanksgiving, trying to insert breaks in between lots of sprints/word wars of my fantasy romance.
Worst Moment of the Week
I had a pretty rough start to the week. Even though I hit 50k on Sunday, I was feeling really lousy by the end of the day (only wrote 2100 words instead of my hyperactive 5k-word days), and that continued through the beginning of the week. I’m starting to wonder if I actually am getting migraines without pain, just the braindead side effects. (Hard to say for sure, I can get some of those symptoms from other issues I have.) I know my mother started getting them later in her life, so it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if I got them, too. It’s just irritating that I either have mood issues that act up more than average and wipe out days at a time, or I have a new kind of migraine to fight with just after getting rid of another trigger—I had been doing better, and no migraines with aura at all. What’s worse, if I start contemplating that while I’m at a special low, I can’t get out of the cycle of unpleasantness. That just made it harder, and I’m not sure if that was part of the cycle or something I made worse by myself.
I hope everyone in the US had a good and safe Thanksgiving! I’m crossing my fingers we don’t end up with a spike in covid cases like Canada did, but with the way people have been acting a lot lately, I really don’t know if that’s worth hoping for. Just because there are vaccines in the works does not mean you can stop wearing your masks and social distancing, people! I’ve been confining myself to my apartment even more stringently than before because I’ve seen so many people ignoring all of the guidelines for staying safe. One person refusing to wear a mask who gets close to me (as I’m high-risk) could mean months of sickness and recovery for me, if I could even depend on recovering. (And no, I’m not just being melodramatic.) Please, think about the people around you. Some of us can’t afford to get covid at all for the risks it would create with already existing conditions.
Cheers,
~Marie
Plot Bunny Whack-a-mole 