2024: The Writing Year Ahead

With the month of January comfortably past the half-way point, but still close enough to the “New Year” that my mind continues to reflect on plans for the year ahead, I thought now would be a good time to discuss my thoughts, plans and goals for writing in 2024. I set out the year with high expectations, coming out of 2023 with a lot of success, in personal terms: which is to say, as I previously reported, last year was my single best year with regard to writing productivity since I started tracking it in 2012. But 2023 is hindsight. Let’s look ahead to my goals for this year.

The “Goal” is relatively simple: I intend to finish my rough draft of “The Book of M” in 2024. More specifically, I hope to get to the end by the close of June. And what do I need to do in order to achieve that goal? I ended 2023 with about 240,000 words completed on my novel. I now estimate that the complete first draft will reach its conclusion with between 275,000 and 285,000 words – call it 280,000 for simplicity. That means, to reach the end, I need to write an additional 40,000 words.

If I have another year like 2023, that’ll be easy to accomplish. But I’ve set my goal to be ambitious. I want to do 40,000 words in just six months. That means I need to write, on average, about 6,667 words per month to finish by the end of June.

That’s going to be a tough goal to beat. But I’m off to a great start!

As of the time of this writing in mid-January, I’ve already written an additional 5,692 words in the novel. That’s ahead of my pacing at this point in the month in 2023. At this rate, I just need to dedicate another hour to an hour and a half to writing before the end of January to meet the 6,667-word goal. In the whole month of January 2023 I actually wrote a total of 7,118 words. I think I can beat that mark in January 2024.

Even if I can’t beat last year’s pacing, I’m still easily on track to finish this novel by the end of August or September at the latest. But I really believe I can do this: I can finish it by the end of June.

That said: finishing the first draft really means I’ve only scratched the surface of turning around a finished novel. This is going to take several drafts to fix plot holes, ramp up characterization, and polish the prose. I’m still at the beginning of the journey.

Now conventional wisdom has it you should put that first finished novel in a drawer and go work on something else for a while before coming back to it to do edits and rewrites. But opinions vary on just how long one should keep the novel out of sight before your eyes and mind are fresh enough to tackle the editing project.

I’m not even sure what “something else” I would turn to working on would be. Probably transcribing old handwritten story notes into documents stored in the cloud. But at the end of the day, I just know I’m going to be eager to get into the thick of editing the first draft.

I mean, the fact is, it’s been 10 years since I really took a good look at the first dozen scenes of this book. I think I can approach those early parts of the book with a pretty clear-eyed take. I know there’s a ton of work to be done there. And, as I pushed on with the rough draft, I intentionally left a trail of breadcrumbs, in the form of document comments where I realized that I would need to change something later.

Basically: I give it two weeks, a month tops, before I’m ready to start editing.

The plan, therefore, is this: assuming I finish the rough draft in June as planned, then I take most of the month of July “off” from the novel (likely, as I said, to be spent transcribing old handwritten story notes). Then by the end of July, I’ll begin a front-to-back read-through of my rough draft, making edit notes as I go. As mentioned above, there are already a lot of edit notes littered throughout the document, so I’ll also be reading those as I go to make sure they still make sense. I’m still not sure whether I’ll print it all out and make handwritten notes (probably?) or just read through on the screen. Either way, the goal here is to get a complete picture of the novel as a whole, to better understand it.

I honestly don’t know how long a complete read-through will take. Maybe a month-and-a-half? That puts me in September before I actually put fingers-to-keyboard and actively start editing and changing things around.

With no prior experience doing edits and rewrites of a project of this size and scope, I have no basis for guesstimating how long it will take to edit this beast. I’ve done a handful of short stories (borderline novellas in a couple cases) and those have generally taken maybe half as long for each edit pass as the initial rough draft took to complete. Give it 4 to 7 edit passes… well… I could literally be doing edits and rewrites on this novel for many years to come. I’m optimistic that I’ll be faster, better, and have more free time to write in the months and years ahead than I have or was in the past. But I’m under no illusions about what I’m in for.

That said, for 2024 I’m not spending any time thinking about trying to find alpha or beta readers. Frankly, the rough draft as it stands is in no shape to share with outside parties. There are too many known problems already. Heck, I don’t even have proper chapter breaks yet. To say nothing of the plot holes and inconsistencies. My primary goal with this first edit pass is to get the plot and characterization in good enough shape that I can share the product with beta readers. If I’m fortunate enough to finish the first edit pass sometime in 2025, that’s when I’ll start the difficult process of looking for willing souls who would take on the almost thankless task of reading an early draft and providing feedback and commentary. Given the length of this behemoth, I don’t expect that will be an easy ask. Still, that’s a problem for future Stephen to solve. Present Stephen first needs to finish this rough draft and complete the initial read-through!

And that’s what I look forward to in 2024. Do you have any writing plans for the year, and if so how are they going?

Writing Year In Review: 2023

Number of Writing Weeks: 35 out of 52

Total Word Count: 56,259 words out of a goal of 59,800

Average Word Count Per Week: 1,082

% of Annual Word Count Goal: 94.1%

Other Stats: 53 Writing Days

This year has been, unequivocally and without question, my single best year of writing productivity since I started tracking back in 2012. I did this while also reading more than I have in the past few years, without sacrificing quality time with my family. And I did it while continuing to hold down a day job that pays the bills while I somewhat quietly toil away in free hours (mostly on weekends, but some evenings too) to pursue this dream of mine to be a true writer.

Now, technically, I fell short of my goal in 2023. But the goal was pretty aggressive (for me). And yet, despite that, I actually got more than 94% of the way there! I can’t understate how accomplished I feel as I look back at 2023 and consider how much I was able to produce. And now “The Book of M” is sitting comfortably at over 240,000 words!

I’ve been saying for a long time that I believe “Book of M” is going to clock in somewhere between 250,000 and 275,000 words. I’m now close enough that I can say pretty definitively that it’s going to be quite a bit more than 250,000 words – almost certainly it will come closer to the higher end of the range I’ve been citing.

Which… isn’t great news, in terms of the potential marketability of the finished product. Because I also know that the way my editing process usually goes (albeit, always before for short stories and novelettes, so works of considerably shorter duration, so things could be a bit different) I’m more likely to increase the length of the book during editing than I am ultimately to cut it. And, at the end of the day, that’s a really long book even for a work positioning itself in the “Epic Fantasy” genre category – at least, this is true for a first time novel.

I mean, sure, popular authors like George R. R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson can pump out epic volumes running from 290,000 even to as much as 450,000 words! But these guys are experienced, and enjoy a healthy following. Meanwhile, me? I’m a complete unknown. (Thus the name on the blog tin!) Take Sanderson, for example: while his latest “Stormlight Archive” book clocks in at well north of 450,000 words, consider his first published outing – Elantris. His freshman outing was a comparatively slim novel of only roughly 205,000 words. I’m looking at a finished product that’s likely to be more than 30% longer than Sanderson’s first novel. But I haven’t (yet) built up the trust and goodwill of an established reader base. Martin’s first novel, Dying of the Light, meanwhile was an even slimmer 72,000 words!

Truth is, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get this published – at least via traditional channels. Which isn’t going to stop me from trying! But I don’t have any expectations that I’ll meet with success. On the other hand, in learning from folks that have been successful in non-traditional self-publishing channels, one of the keys to success there is speed and volume. And… well… I’ve been working on this one, first novel, now for over ten years. There’s no way I can, in any reasonable amount of time, churn out a second, and a third, and so on quickly enough to generate and sustain success in the indie-publishing world.

I mean… maybe I could if I did the basically unthinkable and quit my day job to pivot toward writing full time. But it would be a huuuuuuuge gamble – and I’m personally not known for being a big risk-taker. I don’t see myself quitting the day job until I at least have one successful novel under my belt – if ever – because I would need to be able to know that I could continue to provide for my family no matter which way I steer my career.

It’s a classic case of the Catch-22s.

This would all be so much easier if my first novel had turned out to be an easy-reading 200,000-word epic fantasy instead of a significant 275,000-word undertaking. But that’s not the story I want – need – to tell.

Still, realistically, this is all a concern for another day, right? First order of business is to finish the first draft. There’s no use worrying about how to market, sell, and publish a book that doesn’t – yet – exist! Still, these are the thoughts that plague me as I continue to close in on the end of this book.

So here’s where I stand. I’m at 240,000 words. Over the next three to six months I need to push hard to write those last 20,000 – 35,000 words. My goal for 2024 is simple: to finish “The Book of M” by the end of June. Everything else – whether it’s almost immediately diving in to editing and rewrites, or pausing for a short “palette-cleanser” story, or whatever else – is just the pudding on top. The focus is clear: full-steam-ahead toward “THE END” of “The Book of M”.

Once my first round of edits and rewrites are done – which could be anywhere from sometime in 2025 and beyond – then I can reassess the state of the book. That’s when I’ll hopefully be looking to take on some Beta Readers to help me take on that task.

The way is clear. The path lies before me. All that remains is to tread the path to my next destination, the next stop on this epic (fantasy) journey.

I hope you’ll continue to follow me (all 2.1 of you!) as I travel ever onward toward my goals!

On Writing Two Hundred Thousand Words

I hit a pretty significant writing milestone this past week. My work in progress novel crossed the two hundred thousand word threshold.

I knew when I started out that this book would be close to 200,000 words in length. My very first estimate for the book was about 175,000 but I quickly pivoted to an estimate of 225,000 words. Now I expect it to be a little longer, closer to 250,000. If that’s still accurate, then I should finish my rough draft late this year or early next year, given my current productivity.

I honestly thought I’d be more excited to cross this threshold in my writing journey. But instead I can’t help but reflect on how long the journey has taken.

You see, I started writing “Book of M” not terribly long after I started chronicling my writing journey with this very blog, way back in roughly February of 2011. Twelve long years of sporadic writing. Twelve years of struggling with a variety of factors that have stymied my free time to write. Twelve years of a, frankly, mediocre career mostly in corporate finance that sometimes sucked the will and energy to write out of me. Twelve years in which multiple chronic illnesses took their inevitable toll on my mind and body. But also, twelve years of fatherhood which, even now, I wouldn’t trade for a finished book. Twelve years of good and bad, growth and decline. Twelve years of a life lived the best I could, but not the life I always dreamed I’d be living.

That’s a long dang time to write a book. Long enough to put George R. R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss to shame (though, to be fair, those guys are great when they do finish a book). And reality is, I’m still just at the beginning of this thing. A book well written and worth the time to read goes through no few drafts in number. This is just the first draft. How many revisions and edits save rewrites will it take to have a viable manuscript? That’s anybody’s guess.

I do still look forward to finishing this rough draft. And it is a rough one. I’m going to need a lot of revision, there’s no two ways about it. But passing the finish line will still be cause for celebration. I’ll have done the thing. The thing I’ve dreamed of doing since childhood: writing A book. Rough draft or not, that’s a significant accomplishment. Time will tell if I ever get it in good enough shape to get it published. I’ve got my doubts these days. But regardless, the book will be what it will be: my first full, epic fantasy novel. I can’t wait to write those two little words that tie it all together: The End.

Until then, well, there’s work to do. Here’s hoping I finish it sooner than later…

Writing Year In Review: 2022

Number of Writing Weeks: 23 out of 52

Total Word Count: 42,420 words out of a goal of 60,000

Average Word Count Per Week: 800

% of Annual Word Count Goal: 70.7%

Other Stats: 47 Writing Days

Wow. So 2022 happened, didn’t it? And man… was I blogging and writing machine!

Yeah. Except not.

I mean, honestly, although I fell suuuuuuuper short of my goal for the year (i.e. 120 writing days total; I didn’t even make it to the halfway point), still the net output in terms of Word Count for the year wasn’t all that bad. About average for me. But the blogging? If I’m once again honest I haven’t even given a second thought to the blog since my last post more than one-year-ago today. If I’m sitting down to write, with how limited my time to do so is, you better believe ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s actually to write my book.

2022 was another hard year for me, personally. I’ve mentioned before that I’m battling chronic illness (illnesses if I’m still being honest, as in more-than-one) and the fight continued with some wins and many losses. I have a very demanding day-job. I have a family to provide for, a wife and kids that I love and love to spend time with. And I’m an imminently practical and sometimes even painfully realistic person. For all my flights of fancy, at the end of the day writing isn’t a practical pursuit.

And still I do it.

Because besides all those other things that are true about me, deep in my heart-of-hearts, I’m still a writer. And writers write.

Even if, as in my case, only a little.

Without the writing, I feel less of myself. Like a critical part of my personhood is fading into the background. So I pursue it, despite all the forces in life arrayed against me being able to find the time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Because I can’t let that part of myself disappear entirely. I won’t let the exigencies of life take that away from me.

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But the practical side of me that I alluded to above has been working to assert some influence over my thoughts in the past year. For better or worse, I don’t know. By which I mean this: I’ve always wanted to be a published author. It’s been my dream since I first fell engrossed with Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles as a kid. That was the catalyst for a life-long dream. I wanted to do what he did. But practical-me sees the toll chronic illness has taken on me, the taxing day-job, the demands of life that are not going away ever. And practical-me says: the dream is, for all practical purposes, unattainable. It’s not going to happen. That’s… that’s the reality, I guess. Like… I don’t even have one book finished after laboring on it for over a decade. I don’t even have one draft finished. You can’t get a book published if you don’t have a book that’s ready to be published. And real-talk here: but will I ever be finished with this book? I honestly… don’t know.

Maybe in 2023 I’ll get lucky and finish the first draft. But if I’m frank, it’s an ugly first draft. There are scenes and things in the second half of the book that directly contradict the first half, because I hadn’t thought something up yet when I started that I added or changed as I wrote. And rather than go back and fix it then, I decided to make a note in the draft of what I needed to do, and move on. But the as-yet-unfinished draft manuscript is littered with notes to myself about changes I need to make. The second draft will need to overhaul a ton of stuff that I already wrote, throw out whole scenes and write new ones to replace them, and so on. It’s no small task that I face.

So what if I finish the first draft in 2023? At my current pace, it will almost certainly take another 5, 6, even 7 years to polish up the second draft. I could potentially be in my fifties by thy time I finish. By then, I’ll basically be riding the roller-coaster of life down that last big, terrifying drop before the end-of-the-ride. That’s the part of the ride where the threat of cognitive decline may, capriciously, decide to flex itself: the point past which writing anything that’s actually good becomes a vanishingly unlikely proposition. Or at least that’s what I start to worry about…

Yeah. Practical-me is one depressing persona. He’s a nasty little bugger. But he’s my nasty little bugger.

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Depressing doom and gloom aside, the reality is I can’t possibly get this book in publishing-ready shape for at least another year or two at the most aggressive minimum. Sure, I could do it faster if I devoted myself full time to it. I’ve done the math, and given my real-life productivity rate (in 2022 I wrote at a rate of almost 800 words per hour, for example) if I wrote for even just 3 hours a day, five days a week I could finish the first draft in a couple months. That would leave me a comfortable 10 months of the year to edit and revise. So yeah… If it were my day job I could conceivably turn this book around in under a year.

But it’s not my day job.

And it’s not going to be my day job.

That, sadly, is my ultimate reality. Which means instead I get to write in the margins, where my family and I are able to find an hour here or sometimes even two hours there to set aside for me to write. Weeknights, though, are increasingly difficult. Those chronic illnesses I mentioned… have taken their toll on my evenings. Which is to say I very rarely have productive evenings anymore, because by the end of a typical workday I’m fresh out of spoons (yeah, those spoons; no I don’t have lupus). Indeed, I’m in negative spoon territory most weekday evenings, which means it’s all I can do to go through the motions of getting ready for bed and going there straight away. So that leaves weekends. And yeah, many weekends I’ll be able to squeak in a couple hours of writing time.

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Here’s the positive counter-point: I am still going to write this book. It may never see the light of day. It may never get published. Heck it probably won’t be published. But I am going to write it, just the same, even if I am the only person who ever reads it.

Why?

Why even bother, if it’ll never earn me a dime in royalties?

Because I’m a writer. It’s what I do.

That’s the real truth.

I mean… I don’t actually know whether accepting the fact that my book will never be published is a healthy outlook or is just too depressing to consider. But knowing that I’m going to write it regardless: that feels right to me. That feels true.

So. Onward and upward.

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Well then: where does that leave me in 2023 with regard to writing goals? Last year I wanted to write on 120 days out of the year. Thanks mostly to my friend chronic illness that fell out in spectacular fashion. Looking back not great. But looking ahead: what can I reasonably do in the year before me?

For one thing, I’m not setting a “number of writing days” goal again this year. Instead, I’m going to look at what I can reasonably commit to doing. Which is this: there are, roughly speaking, 52-ish weekends in a year. I can reasonably expect to find time to write on, maybe, at most between 30 and 45 of them. Let’s go conservative-ish and say 35 weekends with writing time. If I can scratch together 2 hours per weekend of writing, that’s potentially 70 hours of writing in the year. Not a lot, honestly. But I think that’s what I can reasonably commit to.

So that’s the goal. 70 hours of writing in 2023. My goals are typically based on a rate of 500 words per hour, which therefore translates to 35,000 words in 2023. I’ve beaten that target multiple times in the last few years. But my real writing rate is somewhere between 600 and 800 words per hour (in 2022 it was closer to 800; so far in 2023 it’s closer to 600). So with a more realistic rate, I can reasonably expect to write between 42,000 and 56,000 words in 2023. I’m going to zero-in on 48,000 words as my target word count for the year. In summary: 70 hours of writing to tally up 48,000 words. that’s my 2023 annual writing goal.

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I’d like to end with a few questions to all the other undiscovered authors out there: my fellow writers who struggle in anonymity. I mean, there’s a slight chance you encounter this blog. If you do, share in the comments:

Do you struggle to write in spite of your anonymity? Do you still dream of one day getting published (or self-publishing)? If not, does this deter you from writing or are you bound-and-determined to write regardless? And if you’re writing regardless of the outcome, do you set writing goals for yourself? What are your goals for this year?

Well. That’s all she wrote. I guess, chances are, I’ll see you all again this time-ish next year! 😉 I kid. But only sorta.

Writing Year In Review: 2021

Number of Writing Weeks: 33 out of 52

Total Word Count: 41,896 words out of a goal of 48,000

Average Word Count Per Week: 806

% of Annual Word Count Goal: 87%

Other Stats: 75 Writing Days

Who’s sad to be looking at 2021 through the rear-view mirror? Anyone? Hey, it’s okay. I certainly understand. 2021: well… it was a year wasn’t it? We can all breathe a sigh of relief now that that’s over.

Honestly, though, in spite of everything: the ongoing global pandemic, my own (thankfully unrelated) ever-present health problems, family and work commitments, and spending an inordinate amount of time with other, non-writing-related hobbies/obsessions, I have to look back at 2021 with a certain sense of satisfaction.

Did I hit my, frankly, modest goal for the year? No. No I did not. But I got kind of close. And realistically, it was the third-best year of writing productivity that I’ve had since I started tracking my writing back in 2012. It’s not where I’d need to be if I want to make it into the professional leagues, no. But it shows that in spite of everything I’ve struggled with, it’s within my grasp to make this push, if I just focus.

Which is why 2022 is going to be my year. I went into 2021 with what I knew was an achievable goal: I’d just done even more than 48,000 words in a single year’s worth of writing already. And despite falling short this year, I’m getting ready to really stretch my ambitions. But I’m re-framing my goal, this year. I won’t be setting a goal in terms of number of words on the page.

You’ll notice in my other stats this year that I actually sat down and wrote fiction on just seventy-five days out of the year in 2021. That means on average I physically put my hands on the keyboard and strung words together a little over once a week (not counting any blogging time). Some weeks I wrote two or three times in a single week. Many weeks I wrote none at all. At the end of the day, though: that’s a poor enough result for someone who aspires to be a professional author. I need to do better.

That’s why, in 2022, I’m setting a goal for the total number of times I will actually sit down and write – in any amount of words. And what is that goal? 120 days of writing productivity, in total. Broken down into weekly chunks that comes to just over two writing sessions per week. But I’m planning on giving myself some padding, and building in free weeks (because some weeks I definitely will not be writing coughhellovacationcough). I’m framing the goal as 3 writing days per week, every week, for 40 weeks in the year. That gives me 12 free weeks.

The way I see it, I can generally put down probably about 500 words per hour, if I’m prepped and ready and in the right headspace to write. If a writing session lasts, on average, maybe about an hour or so, then 120 days of writing in 2022 would translate to approximately 60,000 words of new fiction. It’s a stretch for me. I’ve never written that much in a single year. I’ve never had the stamina, the dedication, the consistency, or, frankly, consistently cooperative and fair health to make that achievable. But I’m going to do it. I’ve got to do it. One-hundred-twenty days of writing. I’ve got this.

Are you ready 2022? I’m about to grab you by the horns and take you down. And when I’m done with you, “The Book of M” is probably going to pass the 200,000-word mark, and be looking pretty good for me to write the words “The End” sometime hopefully in 2023!

So that’s the goal. But I’m going to need help to get there. Including regular accountability. I’ve been struggling to maintain this blog on a monthly cadence. But I’ve also got to do better with that. So here’s the blog plan. I want to really stretch here. I want to report on my writing goal on a semi-weekly basis. I’m going to aim to update you all – that’s right, all 1.25 of you – at least once every two weeks with my current progress toward my 120-day goal.

Who’s with me? Who’s excited to see me draw incrementally closer to crossing the finish line on “The Book of M”? Okay, let’s be real, probably not the 1.25 of you who accidentally stumbled on this blog while googling something completely unrelated, but this guy? I am so on this!

Writing Month In Review: September 2021

Number of Writing Weeks: 3 out of 4

Total Word Count: 1,461 words

Average Word Count Per Week: 365

% of Monthly Word Count Goal: 37%

Other Stats: 5 Writing Days

Well that didn’t go quite as planned, now did it?

September was kind of a train wreck in terms of writing consistently. Once again my health – with respect to my tendency to be too physically exhausted by the end of the day – left me struggling to find opportunities to write. I did my level best to put words on the page, but it just didn’t amount to very much. And yet – better I wrote over 1,400 words than I wrote none at all. Got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and all that.

I actually don’t really have much to say about the writing this month. Things kind of hit a slow-down in terms of progressing the story when I stopped writing in the actual book to fill out my background notes with details about the religions and mythologies and beliefs of the different peoples of this world. I did that in part because I planned for the characters to have a brief but enlightening discussion about their comparative religious ideologies.

When I finally got back to the story, that discussion didn’t unfold quite as I’d planned. And that’s okay. The key, I realized, was that the story itself keep moving, and keep readers engaged. And if that means that there’s less “comparative religion” in the story than I’d intended, but the final result keeps up the pace, then so be it. Certainly, I don’t want to bring the story to a halt and bore the readers.

In fact, this discussion was planned to occur at a point in the story where there’s a bit of a lull in the action, immediately after a (hopefully tense and engaging) action set piece. What happened then is the characters who survived the action scene think they’re getting a moment of rest, but I ended up introducing what I hope was a good amount of tension as their religious differences came to the fore.

And that’s where I am, now. Next up: my main character is set to learn more about the other characters, which hopefully drives her to make some crucial decisions.

Until next time! Keep writing, keep reading, keep living!

Writing Months In Review: May – August 2021

Number of Writing Weeks: 11 out of 19

Total Word Count: 15,053 words

Average Word Count Per Week: 792

% of Monthly Word Count Goal: 94%

Other Stats: 26 Writing Days

I have not been good about keeping a monthly cadence to my writing updates, have I?

It’s been a on-again, off-again few months, really a roller-coaster ride of writing. Lots of times when I was able to buckle down and really crank out the word count. And lots of times when I succumbed to the various vagaries of health and other such limitations and just… didn’t write. Most of the time… if I didn’t write at least once during the week, it’s because I hit a wall of fatigue in the evening hours when I typically do my writing and JUST. COULD. NOT. STAY. AWAKE. I don’t usually like writing about my health. Maybe it’s because I’m a private person. (I’m an introvert.) And maybe it’s because I prefer to pretend that things are fine. (They aren’t.) But, it is a health issue – among many that I struggle with – and it’s one of the hardest on my writing, not least of which is because it’s been nigh impossible to properly diagnose, and therefore the hardest to treat and manage. In the end, I strongly suspect that some of the medicines I take for other health problems are having a soporific side-effect that has proven extremely difficult to treat and manage. But this isn’t a health blog. It’s a writing blog.

As I write this I’m currently sitting at about 14,200 words for the four-month period of May through August – a mix of writing in the Novel and writing notes and supporting documentation on my RPG game design – and with a few days left to go in the latter month. I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get some writing in during these last few sultry days of August.

I’m not overly or unrealistically optimistic, mind you, seeing as that chronic fatigue issue has been especially prevalent of late; but the fatigue comes and goes sometimes without rhyme or reason. It doesn’t generally respond to or correlate with the amount of sleep I get. Instead, it seems to strike at random and over prolonged periods during which I regularly “crash” every evening, having lost any capacity to contemplate any activity other than sleep. Then, just as mysteriously, it’ll clear up for a time and my ability to push through and engage in any activity – not always writing – improves. The good times usually give me an extra hour, maaaaybe two each evening. So, it’s entirely possible that the remaining days of the month will mysteriously turn out better on the fatigue front than it has been lately.

On the bad days, I begin to despair of ever even finishing just this one book, much less the dozens of other ideas I have for novels, short stories, series, and so on. How I reason, can I ever even hope to finish all this work if I can’t stay awake long enough to put in at least some writing time on a regular basis? Never-mind that I ever get even the first thing published in this state. It’s a hard fact. The health problems aren’t going anywhere, and even the doctors are left scratching their heads and shrugging and throwing drugs at the wall to see what sticks and what bounces off.

In my dayjob I’ve been given this amazing opportunity to participate in series of Coaching sessions on building personal resilience. Of course, the first and primary reason for the opportunity is that a resilient and emotionally stable and engaged employee is, in fact, a more productive, creative, and useful worker. But the benefits of personal resilience can have ameliorative and salutary effects in one’s personal life too. Until I get published and writing becomes my actual career (or, at least, a secondary career) my personal life includes writing (and game design!).

Applying the lessons learned (thus far), one of my immediate goals is to be able to identify negative thought patterns that fall under the general umbrella of “Cognitive Distortions”, to label them, and to shift the thought pattern toward a more fact-based foundation. In this case, it goes like this:

My thoughts:

Because of my health problems I can’t write. Because I can’t write now, that means I’ll never finish. If I never finish, I’ll never get published. If I never get published, then I am a failure at the one thing that is most important to me personally (outside of my family). If I fail at that, then I am a failure as a person.

~Me, following the train of thought from it’s impetus to what seems like its logical conclusion.

I can identify and label that thought as a cognitive distortion of the “overgeneralizing”, “all-or-nothing” variety. To reframe it and shift it, I could look at the situation a little more dispassionately, thus:

My health problems are preventing me from writing in this moment. The health problem does not define me, and over time it can be managed, at least some of the time. Maybe it’s not managed today, but tomorrow is a new day. I can still finish this novel, even if it takes me a few more years. And if I finish this novel, I still have a shot at trying to get it published. And even if I never get published, I’ve only ever truly failed if I give up.

~Me, pushing myself to reframe my thoughts despite a very strong inclination to prefer the prior thought pattern as being more consistent with reality.

This is, in fact, an excellent example of what it means to capture and reframe these negative thought patterns and cognitive distortions. In the short term, I don’t know that I really believe the reframed thought. But, with time, it may be enough simply to think it and to repeat it as something of a mantra or an affirmation. By capturing the negative thoughts and forcibly reframing them, regardless of whether I’m feeling it at an emotional level, I hope to train my conscious mind (and, through practice, my unconscious mind) to automatically favor the more positive and edifying trains of thought.

And, because I’m a writer and I think best when I’m writing… I’ll probably be doing some of that here in this blog. I’m putting this out in the open. I may struggle with multiple, often difficult to manage health deficiencies. But that does not define me. It’s legitimately hard to take a positive view sometimes. But I’m counting on being able to change this with practice. Because I need this, for me.

Still to come on this blog: hopefully more positive and edifying reframing of my often negative thought patterns. More learning about resilience. More about my writing: what I’m currently writing, what I plan to write someday, and so on. And more about my game designs. I have plans to share snippets of my first draft work-in-progress on my novel. Snippets of short stories I’ve written. Musings about tabletop game design and game mechanics. And more consistent updates on my writing progress. It’s time I reframe this blog and turn it around from a ghost town overrun by gale-tossed tumbleweeds and build up more clear, more focused picture of me and my writing life. Sometimes with the warts, sometimes with a little cognitive “photoshopping” and reframing. But always the truth. Until next time!