Teetering on the Brink

I’m close to giving up on NaNoWriMo.

Not that I’m giving up on “Yershi the Mild.” I still like the story, and think I can carry it to an acceptable conclusion. Just not on the NaNoWriMo timeline.

My writing tends to come in spurts, with a strong bout of writing stretching over days or weeks ending in a time when I do little or no writing on a piece. I call this percolation, because the story and the characters are always at the back of my mind, sending me little messages which I duly note in my notes and then, when the muse strikes again, I’m back at it, working away.

I’ve hit that familiar ebb with “Yershi the Mild” at just under 32,000 words in.

I have the familiar excuses: I’ve been doing a lot of remodeling at the house – we replaced four windows and I ended up having to do some wall repair, drywall, plastering and painting as well to make up for the mess discovered once the windows were removed – and that’s eaten up way too much time at home. And though I confess I do sneak some writing time in at work, we’ve been busy enough with official work stuff that the unofficial stuff has had to slide. And I’m also teaching two courses, which take up a lot of time as well. So what time I get for writing comes intbetween things, and I haven’t had much inbetween time lately.

To my credit, I did do t a3,600-word writing sprint over the weekend which helped bring my NaNoWriMo numbers back up, but I’m facing another such sprint today. Time will tell on that one.

And oh yeah. I’ve got another blog I want to start as well, been promising that for a month now and set a Dec. 1 deadline for myself. So whee I’ve been busy.