It’s been a week. A hard, stressful week full of tears and too-little sleep and a sinus infection that wouldn’t quit. I’m hesitant to enumerate excuses here – but as you’ll soon see from my stats, very little writing happened this week. On Monday, I received the news that my cat (who we’ve had since I was twelve – over ten years now) was sick. It started with the fact that he wasn’t eating, and we assumed it would be nothing. Within 24 hours, we had a cancer diagnosis. Within 48 hours, we were told he had days to live.
I realize that in the scheme of life, it is a first world problem to have missed my NaNo word count because of a sick cat. But this is the first pet I ever had, and the first I will lose. So when my mom called to tell me he was dying, I rushed home to say goodbye. Between the travel, learning to administer IV fluids to an unhappy feline, and managing my mom’s health when she was getting very little sleep, I didn’t write at all.
As of writing this, my cat is still hanging on. Five days ago they gave him hours, because he was septic. But he’s stubborn, and I think my brother will get to say goodbye over Thanksgiving, which I am grateful for.
All this is to say that I have cried in public more times in the past week than ever in my life before (I hate crying in front of people) and I haven’t had the emotional brain space to be creative in the slightest. But I’ll still break down my stats like my other posts, and set some gentle goals for this week.
11/15 – I wrote 121 words in an existing nonfiction piece.
11/16 – I wrote 719 words in my novel.
11/17 – 11/21 – I didn’t write at all.
So I wrote a total of 840 words last week, bringing my current NaNo total up to 8,409. Obviously this isn’t what I hoped for, but it’s what there is. If I had to find a silver lining, it’s that 100% of my words were in creative pieces, as opposed to blog posts. Last week I set the goal of writing a greater percentage of words in creative pieces, and I accomplished that (albeit by not writing a single blog post.)
For this upcoming week, the last full week of NaNo, I would like to write one new chapter in my novel. Thus far my chapters have averaged 1,000-2,000 words, but I don’t have a hard and fast word count goal. Rather I just want to get a chapter done, and gain some momentum in that project. I also want to write one blog post, in addition to this update. I don’t want the blog to fall dormant for too long. I’ll be extremely happy if I can accomplish those two things.
So here we are – the last week of NaNo (minus those two bonus days at the end.) How is everyone feeling? What goals do you have going into the home stretch?
Ink Stains & Blank Pages 