2023: Year in Review

 Now that the holidays are over and the year is coming to an end, I thought it would be a great time to reflect on what this year held in store for my writing, and everything I was able to accomplish. 

Starting off with the biggest accomplishment of the year, I published three books. “Leo” at the beginning of January, “Selena” in April, and “I Hate My Roommate” in August. At the beginning of the year, I was hoping to have a fourth one out, but that plan changed, and I’m choosing to be proud of the fact that I was able to publish three books, since that’s still an incredible feat. Also, if you’re interested in any of my books, here is a link to my Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/C-Hilts/author/B0BHYNRJDJ?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true 

Now, onto the less glamorous side of what I’ve been working on. I’ve managed to plot four novels this year, finished writing two novels (one in the final stages of edits and one that hasn’t been edited at all), redone an entire outline because I didn’t like it, and wrote down more ideas than I can count. It’s a lot to be proud of for sure, but it’s hard to conceptualize what all of that means, since yes, I can see the thirty pages of the outline I wrote and I know I’ve edited six hundred plus pages twice, yet you can’t hold that very easily--unless you want to spend hours printing, and let’s be real, no one has the patience for that--so those numbers feel mildly meaningless for me. 

Once again, I attempted NaNoWriMo, and was successful in my attempt to write fifty thousand words in the month of November. If you’re interested in hearing more about that, I have a post detailing my experiences with it this year. This accomplishment is yet again another one I have a problem conceptualizing, and it’s easier to view it as how many chapters I was able to complete, since that feels more like checking things off a checklist, and less like an abstract number. 

As I’m celebrating my accomplishments, one thing keeps popping up in the back of my mind: what projects are being tackled next year? What goals do I have? And although those are important questions and ones I do need to answer, right now, I’m choosing to allow myself to just exist in that weird, timeless stretch of time between Christmas and New Years and not set a bunch of goals for 2024 that I’m sure are going to change a hundred times by the end of February. Right now, I’m just going to bask in my successes, since I deserve to do that once in a while. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

Writing & The Holidays

 As the holidays fast approach, it’s got me thinking about being a writer around the holidays, and the challenges that accompany that. As we discussed last week, setting deadlines during most of the year is a challenge, so when you add in holiday engagements, those deadlines seem even harder to set and achieve. 

This year, my motivation to write is lower than it has been in past years, so getting things done is hard, especially when you consider wanting to be able to feel like you’re getting a break around Christmas. That’s something I’ve been struggling with, actually, since I’m not sure how much time I should reasonably give myself off around Christmas, because I set my own deadlines, and I’m not meeting them right now. I want to give myself a break, but I also want to set myself up for success in the new year. 

So, how do I fix this? As I mentioned last week, setting deadlines is something one needs to reevaluate regularly. Because of the holiday season and the low motivation I’m facing, these deadlines have to be very reasonable and adjustable. Sure, getting two chapters written a week, a section of an outline plotted every week and a half, and five chapters edited a week is great to accomplish and makes great progress, but that’s not working for me right now. Easing back on that and figuring out what projects I actually want to work on is hopefully going to make writing during Christmas a lot easier. 

Since last week was all about deadlines, I thought I’d also talk about writing about the holidays. Due to the fact that Christmas only comes once a year, and I’m writing pretty much constantly, I’m regularly writing about my characters’ Christmas celebrations at random points throughout the year. As a person who loves Christmas, I don’t mind writing about gift giving and tree trimming in June, but it does sometimes feel difficult to capture the Christmas spirit months away from the actual event. 

As for other holidays, Christmas is the most difficult to write around, and basically only the one I write about. New Year's Eve makes an appearance pretty regularly as well, but that doesn’t feel as big of a deal as Christmas to me. Besides, there’s more holiday traditions for Christmas to write about than there is for New Year’s Eve, or most other holidays. 

So, the holidays are a time to reevaluate deadlines and in some cases, get your butt in gear to finish things before the new year starts, but they’re also a time to reflect on everything that you’ve accomplished during the year.

That's all for now, folks!

-C

Setting Deadlines

 Ah yes, a writer’s best (or worst) motivator. Setting deadlines for yourself is a difficult process, and today I’ve decided to talk about my experiences with setting them for myself. 

Long before I was writing every single day, I had no deadlines for myself, and I was writing according to my motivation. Spoiler alert, that meant I was writing a lot one day, and then not touching my project for weeks. I then started doing NaNoWriMo, and although that wasn’t a deadline in the sense that I use them now, it at least gave me a goal to work towards every day. When I first started doing NaNo, writing 1,667 words a day seemed almost impossible, and now I can grind that out in half an hour, so I guess that’s proof that consistent writing and goals does pay off. 

When I started working on multiple projects at once, it was clear to me that I needed deadlines to ensure that every project was getting the attention it needed to make progress. And so, I got a planner specifically for my writing deadlines, and I was off to the races. I would figure out how many chapters a novel was going to have, and when I wanted it done. I would then divide the amount of days I had by the amount of chapters I had, and set deadlines accordingly. For the most part, my deadlines consisted of my writing and my editing, but I’ve also moved plotting into something that needs deadlines. 

For a while, having aggressive writing deadlines and multiple chapters due every week worked well for me. It kept me motivated, and gave me something to work towards every day. However, when it got to the point where I was writing one novel where chapters were due every three days and one chapter where chapters were due every four days, it got to be too much, especially the week that I had five chapters due in a week. I did manage to do it, but it was a lot, and I never want to do that again. Granted, that was a period of time when I was writing to avoid dealing with things, so it makes sense that I wanted to write so much, since it kept me from feeling things. 

Nowadays, I do have deadlines every week, since it gives me a reason to write every day, and it gives my day some structure. They’re a lot less intense than they were that week, but at the time of writing this, I have deadlines set for one writing one chapter a week per novel I’m working on (so two), five chapters edited a week, and one block of the outline done every one and a half weeks. Still crazy, but a bit more reasonable. 

Setting deadlines that are actually obtainable is something I still struggle with, and something I think needs to be reevaluated from time to time, since our ability to work on stuff like this changes, and it’s okay to change your deadlines along with it. I’ve redone deadlines hundreds of times, and have even set deadlines for the entire year that I’ve long abandoned. For me, it works to set deadlines month by month, since the projects I’m working on and my ability to actually complete my goals changes a lot, and this way, I don’t have to scribble out a bunch of deadlines on my calendar when I can’t meet them. 

So, deadlines are something that I need and enjoy having, but there’s definitely an art to setting deadlines that are lenient enough that you can actually meet them, but challenging enough that you’re still motivated to write. It’s an art I’m still figuring out, yet it’s one that I’m going to be trying to master for the rest of my writing career.

That's all for now, folks!

-C

NaNoWriMo 2023 Review

 As I’m writing this, NaNoWriMo isn’t quite over, but I finished the goal of 50,000 words last night, and thought I would share my experience with NaNo this year with all of you. 

This year, I was able to write at least 1670 words every day, meaning that I was over par every day. To be honest, this was just so I could receive a badge--a digital one, mind you--from the NaNoWriMo website saying I hit par every day. Even on days when I was struggling to write, either mentally or because of my chronic pain, I forced myself to hit par, because filling in a little badge icon was important to me. And I knew that if I hit that goal, I made decent progress on my novel that day, and that was definitely important, too. 

Some days, getting the amount of words written that I needed to was a challenge, and took me all day to do, and other days, I could sit down at my desk, my fingers flying over the keyboard, and get my writing done within half an hour. That’s the interesting part about NaNo, since every day is different as you try to obtain your goal. There were some stretches where my word count was over 1800 words every day, and there were others where I was just barely making par. All I care about is that I managed to finish NaNoWriMo three years in a row, and I have the certificates to prove it.

I will say, doing NaNoWriMo on a new project made it difficult for me to balance the other projects I was working on, especially on days where getting to 1670 words was an all day ordeal, since I just didn’t have the time or mental energy to be editing, plotting, and writing my other projects. My first year in succeeding at NaNo, I was writing constantly on like three different projects, and thrived on that. This year, however, with an increase in my chronic pain, balancing four plus projects at once was a lot more difficult than I was expecting. 

So, what comes next? I’m hoping to keep doing the NaNoWriMo word count goal for the month of December, since I want to give myself a good start on the novel I started writing, “Love Through Anguish”. In the new year, I’m not going to keep up with that, but I’m hoping balancing all of my projects goes a bit smoother. Setting realistic deadlines is a crucial part of that, which you can read more about next week. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C