Everything I’d read about this National Novel Writing Month challenge said that the second week was the toughest. That hadn’t been my experience until this weekend.
I’d been remarkably productive throughout the week, clocking in at around 2,000 words a day. That pace included an evening celebrating my birthday, doing the whole family Thanksgiving thing, and having a normal life.
A few things do fall by the wayside when one tries to write a novel alongside full-time writing and editing — including exercise and, unfortunately, Substack (sorry).
Then came what I dreaded: trying to work on the novel on a work weekend. You see, when I work the weekend, it’s a 13-hour day on Saturday and a 10-hour day on Sunday. Combine that with going to church on Sunday morning (I just bring my laptop with me for work) and college football on Saturdays this time of year (I write and edit while I watch the Dawgs play), and it’s easy to see how novel writing could fall by the wayside.
What I did find is that writing the novel came in fits and starts with long work days. Tonight, after my work day was done, I was so close to the halfway mark — 25,000 words — and I just couldn’t come up with anything. It’s the closest thing I think I’ve ever experienced to full-blown writer’s block.
It’s both infuriating and discouraging to know you need to write yet having nothing to write about. To me, it felt like writing in the wilderness. Somehow I persevered, and a scene came to me.
I made it to the halfway point: 25,004 words. I was waiting on that 25K threshold to introduce a major plot point — which I’ll start writing tomorrow. Hopefully it’s all downhill from there.
Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash