Soldier of Dorsa sits steadily at 127,983 words today, or about 1,000 words more than my update from just over a week ago. I’ve come a long way (or regressed a long way) since the days when I expected myself to write 1,000 words per day at minimum.
My co-worker Matthew said to me the other day, a horror novel author and first-year teacher, “What do you say when you go from averaging a thousand words per day to barely two hundred???”
I answered: “You call it normal for being a first-year teacher.”
Or, I suppose in my case, normal for being a student teacher who’s simultaneously taking three master’s level classes and working on fulfilling her credential requirements.
This Year’s NaNoWriMo Goal
I tried NaNoWriMo last year (that’s “National Novel Writing Month” if you didn’t know, the month where amateur and professional writers alike try to finish a novel in one month) and nearly hit the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words written over the course of a single November.
Over and over again since I started graduate school in May, I have made commitments and promises to myself and to my readers that I just haven’t been able to stick to. I thought I would do a May version of NaNoWriMo to really ramp up Soldier of Dorsa, for example, and it worked great for the first two weeks of the month… and then I started graduate school and everything fell apart.
I’m so tired of making promises that I just haven’t been able to keep. For example, three months ago, I really and truly thought I would be in the editing process for Soldier by now. Even two months ago, I thought there was still a chance.
It’s frustrating and discouraging. Since I started writing as Eliza Andrews in 2016, I’ve published an average of 2-3 novels per year. In 2019, I will have published 1 novel (Eastside / Westside / Love) and, if I’m really, really lucky and make some changes, I *might* finish Soldier of Dorsa. But frankly, it seems unlikely.
But I’m not giving up.
That image above is one my mom had taped to her office door for years and years. I always found it brutal and somewhat disturbing, but these days it gives me inspiration, because I’m the frog. I feel defeated at every turn when it comes to my writing lately, but somehow, some way, I’m going to finish Soldier.
So I’m setting a NaNoWriMo goal this year of 20,000 words. That’s 30,000 fewer words than the normal NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000, and it also won’t bring me to the end of Soldier (which I anticipate to be more like 200,000 words long), but if I can manage to eke out 20,000 words, I’ll consider the month a success.
I appreciate the patience of my readers, and of everyone who follows this blog and drops lines of encouragement from time to time. Your patience and encouragement do not go unheard.
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