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Is It Time For NaNoWriMo?
Oct. 31st, 2023 08:52 pmI brushed up my profile today over at the NaNoWriMo website, but I don't think I will participate fully this year. I've received feedback for King Eyes from a development editor and a critique partner (and I'm also expecting to receive more feedback from a couple of beta readers), and my hope is to use NaNo to consolidate all of these to finalize a third draft for the story. So I won't be doing a traditional NaNo with a 50K word goal. Basically my goal is to end up with a draft that can be proofread and be ready to ship off to my website.
All in all, it feels so strange to be at this point in the year. October has crept along, and parts of it felt slow, and other parts felt like a blink. These past two days I was so absorbed with work even after office hours, that I just couldn't focus on prepping for NaNo. Initially I had planned to use the last week of October to look over the feedback I've received so far, but now I figure I might as well wait for the others to come.
Asking for feedback from others has never been an easy process, but I'm especially having a trying time with one of my beta-readers this time around. She hasn't been the best in communicating delays, and while I understand that freelancers have a lot of other commitments, I wish that she could at least be a little more communicative. As it happened, I have had to check-in consistently every due date and extend the deadline. I would even appreciate it more if she had just set better deadlines herself, but every message I received were along the lines of, "I'd have it for you this week," or "I'd have it for you today," or "I'd have it for you this weekend for sure." And lo and behold, still nothing after a week, after a day, after the weekend. It's just been very frustrating working with this freelancer.
In other news, I have this numb feeling whenever I think about the year ending. I feel like this year threw so much at me, like I had to take three steps back, and I'm now just getting back to the spot where I'd been a year or so ago. On one hand, perhaps I ought to think of it as an achievement to be recovering those three steps, but on the other hand I feel very frustrated that I'm still, overall, in the same spot as I've been a few years now without making more progress in my life.
Once again, I feel the same inner conflict as I did when my cousin died a year ago. Although I'm unhappy where I am at life, I feel like I can't complain, because other people have it worse (or no longer have a life at all). Especially during the past few weeks, it has been virtually impossible to escape news of people suffering around the globe, and I feel like a wretchedly spoiled brat that I could complain about my life when there are people who are literally being tortured and killed out there. I feel ungrateful that I should want more out of my life when there are others who would probably be very content with the life I'm leading now. Still, I can't shake off the yearning. I can't shake off the desire to want more, or if not more, just something different than what I have now.
I don't know how the year is going to end, how we're going to celebrate the holidays. This time of the year has been very difficult the last few years, and I don't know if I'm going to face the same thing again. If the past years are anything to go by, perhaps I at least have the reassurance that I can make it through, but to be honest, I'm just not looking forward to it.
All in all, it feels so strange to be at this point in the year. October has crept along, and parts of it felt slow, and other parts felt like a blink. These past two days I was so absorbed with work even after office hours, that I just couldn't focus on prepping for NaNo. Initially I had planned to use the last week of October to look over the feedback I've received so far, but now I figure I might as well wait for the others to come.
Asking for feedback from others has never been an easy process, but I'm especially having a trying time with one of my beta-readers this time around. She hasn't been the best in communicating delays, and while I understand that freelancers have a lot of other commitments, I wish that she could at least be a little more communicative. As it happened, I have had to check-in consistently every due date and extend the deadline. I would even appreciate it more if she had just set better deadlines herself, but every message I received were along the lines of, "I'd have it for you this week," or "I'd have it for you today," or "I'd have it for you this weekend for sure." And lo and behold, still nothing after a week, after a day, after the weekend. It's just been very frustrating working with this freelancer.
In other news, I have this numb feeling whenever I think about the year ending. I feel like this year threw so much at me, like I had to take three steps back, and I'm now just getting back to the spot where I'd been a year or so ago. On one hand, perhaps I ought to think of it as an achievement to be recovering those three steps, but on the other hand I feel very frustrated that I'm still, overall, in the same spot as I've been a few years now without making more progress in my life.
Once again, I feel the same inner conflict as I did when my cousin died a year ago. Although I'm unhappy where I am at life, I feel like I can't complain, because other people have it worse (or no longer have a life at all). Especially during the past few weeks, it has been virtually impossible to escape news of people suffering around the globe, and I feel like a wretchedly spoiled brat that I could complain about my life when there are people who are literally being tortured and killed out there. I feel ungrateful that I should want more out of my life when there are others who would probably be very content with the life I'm leading now. Still, I can't shake off the yearning. I can't shake off the desire to want more, or if not more, just something different than what I have now.
I don't know how the year is going to end, how we're going to celebrate the holidays. This time of the year has been very difficult the last few years, and I don't know if I'm going to face the same thing again. If the past years are anything to go by, perhaps I at least have the reassurance that I can make it through, but to be honest, I'm just not looking forward to it.
