Progress Report 12/7

Remember that great momentum I had at the end of December?  That has collapsed like a wet taco. 

December 1st, I was writing, and I thought to myself, "If the officer lets you, can you ride in the front seat of a police car?"  Last month, if I'd had this question, I would have shrugged, made a mental note to look it up when the draft was done, and moved on with my writing.  But December 1st, I stopped and looked it up.

December 2nd, I thought, "What's that word for when things are inside other things?  It starts with a C?  Geez, this is the worst brain fart."  Last month, if I'd had this question, I would have written, "There was another thing inside that thing," made a mental note to make it more eloquent later, and moved on with my writing.  But December 2nd, I stopped and busted out the thesaurus app, which has been updated since I last looked at it, so I had to tool around on it a bit.

It's now December 7th, and I am behind on my word count goals.

I've come up with a few reasons why that might be.

Reason 1: Excuses Excuses

My son was baptized this weekend.  This in itself wouldn't put me behind on my writing progress, but the grandparents that came into town to witness my baby scream while a paster shouted over him can account for some lost time.  It's hard to write and socialize at the same time, or write and pick someone up from the airport (although waiting in the cell phone lot was time well spent).  I do recognize that this is an excuse, and I could have been more assertive.

Reason 2: The NaNo Drop

It's really weird that the lack of accountability would have such a strong effect on my productivity, but I think it did.  One of the cool things about NaNo is that people can click on my user page and see my progress.  I told everyone I was doing it.  I had to have something to show for that, or people would know that I was slacking.  That makes sense, but the weird part is that I strongly doubt anyone looked at how I was doing.  The accountability was mostly in my head.  But still, when that accountability was taken away, all of a sudden, my motivation took a nose dive.  Absolutely no one would know I was under-preforming, except that I'm writing this blog post to tell you about it.

The other part is that NaNo has that cool graph that showed where I was and showed the red line of where I ought to be.  The site had those stats about average daily words written and how many words I needed to write to stay on track.  There's something really satisfying in getting my words above the line.  There's something really satisfying in making those stats turn green when I hit my daily quota.  Now, the good thing is that this is pretty easy to fix with a spread sheet.  I think I need to do that.

Reason 3: The Psychological

Last week I was "getting to the good part," but now I'm at the good part.  My hero is hitting all the barriers all at once.  Everything is falling apart.  He's cracking and shuddering and about to explode.  And it's emotionally draining.  I need to get into a mindset where I can channel his anxiety, his fear, his stress.  And I am not in the mood.  I don't think it'd be good for me right this second when I'm already stressed about splashing water on my son and stressed about all the violence in the world that just keeps coming and coming.  I don't think it'd be good for me to get in the mindset I need to be in while my son naps on me.  On the other hand, when is a good time to write?  Never.  Might as well do it now.  And also, I've said before that this draft is weirdly emotionless.  So why do I care all of a sudden?  I need to just chug through.