My NaNoWriMo Story Part 3

The Downward Slope

This is a period of time that I’m very ashamed of.  It’s a period of time when I felt that I would not complete the contest and would just settle for the headstart that the contest provided me.  This was the point when the writing was unforgivable and my inner editor just wouldn’t let me feel confident about what I was doing.  Not only was my inner editor making me feel like less of a writer but this was also the period I had the most distractions.

I was working long days, in some cases going over my shift or working someone else’s hours.  My initial plan of working through my lunch hour was thwarted by hunger and fatigue.  I sat and ate lunch with my coworkers for most of the month.  I wrote with them around about 10% of the time and by myself about 15%.  When at home my mom wouldn’t really relent on asking me questions that I didn’t think were relevant and soon my nephew was coming over nightly thanks to his new job.  Seeing my nephew is usually a joyous occasion for me.  This time was no different but marked with tremendous trepidation because I knew I would be distracted with him around and lose precious contest time.  I’m not tough enough for this I suppose.  I have trouble just shutting people out.  I can do it for a decent period of time before I start to feel bad because I’m so good at it…which makes me bad at it I suppose.

My writing productivity dwindled embarrassingly low.  I wasn’t even hitting 300-400 words a day and then began skipping days entirely.  The combination and long work days and long bus waits and rides wore me down to the point of not even wanting to write anymore.  It didn’t help that when I did write I thought I was writing absolute shit.  I wasn’t going to win the contest but at least I had a decent start.  At that point I had roughly 15,000 words but I was roughly 2-3 weeks in and now I was just about ready to give up.

I began playing videogames again and watching anime.  I managed to start Skyrim and finish a few quest lines.  I watched all of Gundam 08^th MS team and while both those distractions offered up a ton of inspiration I still was severely lagging behind in word count.  My nephew was also coming over daily with tales of his new job and to play a few games.  He had begun Skyrim (which led to me playing it) and had even bought Grand Theft Auto V just to play on my Xbox.  I was very entertained by his playthrough and we had shared a lot of laughs but again I wasn’t getting anything done.  I liked seeing my nephew because I rarely got a chance to but this contest was really important to me.  I needed to do my best at the very least, nothing else would serve.  So I killed two birds with one stone.  I gave my nephew my Xbox to take home with him and with that made it more convenient for him to play games and increased my word count thanks to the increased focus.

So although I was pretty lousy on production for nearly two straight weeks I still managed to produce at least something.  At that point I wasn’t even halfway done but those small increments kept me in the game.  With my time quickly dwindling down and my production levels so very far from goal, I finally had enough and put my plan for productivity into play.

Special thanks to the wicked awesome distractions of Man of Steel, We’re the Millers, Identity Thief, The Wire, Binding of Isaac, Borderlands 2, and Devil Survivor, along with Skyrim, GTA V, and Gundam 08^th MS Team.  All you fictional entertainment pieces have kept my head out of my own worlds and into yours.  Thanks for helping to make me a lazy bastard!