writing failure

Author Adventures: Camp NaNoWriMo Week 2

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I think I’m officially calling it that I’ve failed Camp NaNo yet again. I’ve been sitting at 12,413 words since last Tuesday, I think?

Anyways, I know that I didn’t want to talk about mental health on here anymore but I figured I might as well say that I’ve entered a really bad depressive episode and I just have no motivation to do anything. AKA: What’s the point in writing anything? (It’s not like you’ll ever get published) What’s the point in trying to be happy? (You’re just going to end up sad again) Why bother doing anything? (The world is horrible and we all die in the end anyways).

Sorry if that was really negative but that’s about all I’ve been thinking about. Like I even got to the point with these blog posts that I was writing them the day of trying to get them published before my normal scheduled publishing time. I just started feeling like everything I do is completely pointless and I wanted to give up. So with Camp, I did.

Usually I get a bit more creative when I’m depressed but more recently it just turns me into an unproductive crying mess. Like yesterday I spent hours watching Black Mirror and true crime documentaries and doing crossword puzzles. And then I forced myself to go to bed because I was sad that I hadn’t done anything productive all day.

Things are just going really poorly in my personal life and it’s hard to feel like anything is worth doing because I’m pretty sure I’ll never get out of the hole that I’ve been in for 2+ years.

So yeah, that’s basically what’s been going on. Here’s a really short excerpt from what I have written so far (I know it’s not great):

“I didn’t know what forever felt like until I met you. Forever was a tattoo, a bad decision, something that would ruin my life. I never knew that forever could be home. That forever could be family.” Alyssa turned towards the rest of us then, I can’t tell if she’s on the verge of sobbing or laughing. Her smile is radiating and Beth grabs onto her hand.

I sit back in my seat, thinking about the concept of forever. I don’t know what I think about forever, the evidence is all around me. Happily ever after runs rampant in my family. Beth and Alyssa are further proof of that. I think about my friends back in Minnesota. Of Carter, Adam, my roommates, and then of Austen. It never occurred to me before that maybe Austen could be a forever. That maybe I had finally met someone that could love me the way that my parents love each other, or the way that Beth and Alyssa love each other. I can’t help but wish that Austen was here with me now, thoughts now wandering to him driving me to the airport when I left for Washington for the wedding. 

He’s my best friend and maybe I love him. Maybe he’s the one I’ve wanted all along. 

Alrighty then, hope y’all have a decent week. Happy writing and all that jazz.

Author Adventures: I Think I’m Writing A Book

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I have long dreamed of being a published author. Like this is a dream that goes all the way back to elementary school. Back in high school I discovered NaNoWriMo and I attempted it every year for five years straight! And for all five of those years that I tried I failed miserably each time. I even tried out Camp NaNoWriMo on a few occasions and shockingly I failed all of those attempts too.

Some of those failed attempts included multiple contemporary romance books filled with extreme teen angst and a book about a girl who found out that she was cloned by her “real” mother because that woman’s “original” daughter had died. I’ve gone back and forth between working on contemporary books and fantasy based books and I’ve often thought about writing nonfiction or even historical fiction. When it comes to writing anything other than fantasy though I get nervous about doing research. I do realize that research is a part of writing but dang does it stress me out! I mean now that I’m not in school I could dedicate more time to research things but it still just weighs me down.

I’ve come decently close to finishing a nonfiction book that I wrote a few summers ago, I got about halfway through it before realizing I had nothing more to write about. I would love to revisit it eventually but I would have to change the entire infrastructure of the book and I’m not sure if I’m willing to overhaul it quite yet.

I also started at least one, if not two, writing projects with an ex of mine that were going well. It was actually pretty beneficial to me to have someone else to write with because it helped keep the story going when I got stuck; as soon as I didn’t have something to write about he would jump in and so on. But now I am writing by myself and because of that I have no idea if any of the small tidbits of stories that I have in my brain will ever come to fruition or if I’ll just have folders upon folders of Scrivener documents that never make it past chapter three. Knowing me, there will definitely still be folders upon folders but I’m hoping that in documenting my writing process that maybe I’ll hold myself accountable enough to write more than the bare minimum.

So as an end to this introduction to yet another new series on my blog I would just like to say welcome to my descent into madness, if there is never another post to this series you will know I gave up… again. Anyways, here’s to hoping this will end in me becoming a published author! I’ll chat with you about my potential projects in the next post. Have a great day everyone!