Hello! This week – or last weeks – writing update is coming at you a little bit late, sorry about that. I have had a bit of an up and down, confusing week.
As the majority of you know, April is one of the months for Camp NaNoWriMo. I started this month with a project in mind to work on as part of Camp. You can read more about the details: here. In short though, it was a YA contemporary. However, I discussed last week about my struggles with motivating myself to write and I was just really having a hard time wanting to write this story.
In any project, it is important to want to write the story you are telling and to be at least inspired by it. That sounds like a little bit of a romanticisation of the term, because obviously every day, you are not going to be inspired by it and you aren’t going to want to write it. I didn’t feel inspired by it in the slightest though. I was forcing words out and I wasn’t reaching my wordcount goals and I just wasn’t liking anything I was writing.
As I have discussed previously, I am using Camp as a way to clear my mind whilst I take a break from my main project but keep me writing and motivated to write so I can return to my main project next month. With the way the month started, this just wasn’t going to happen.
Between Sunday 4th April – Friday 9th April, I wrote 3,307 words. I wrote on four of those days, with my highest word count of 1,000 words. That is still a good wordcount for the week, however, as I am fast drafting and had a lot of free time, I knew I could have done better – and I also wanted to do better. I finished on the 9th April with 5,140 words total and I didn’t like what I had written, nor did I like where anything was going.
All week, I had another fantasy project floating around in my head. Someone in the comments last week mentioned how I may be struggling going from a fantasy to a contemporary because it is such a change of pace, and that has also been lingering with me.
So on Saturday, I sat at my laptop, and thought I would just bullet point my ideas for this new fantasy project and instead, I ended up writing an opening scene and one thing led to another and I had 1,200+ words. I slept on it, and when I woke the next day, I was bursting with the inspiration and motivation that I had been craving. I had work that morning though (which is why I didn’t manage to get this post up yesterday) and my entire shift I was buzzing with excitement to get home and write.
With that, I officially abandoned my YA Contemporary and I am now working on a mermaid fantasy story. I think this was the best thing for me at this stage. Within three days, I already have 5,000 words and I have finally stopped thinking everyday about the things I want to add to my main project. I think this is the perfect thing for me right now. It is offering the best distraction and I am actually really happy with what I am writing and creating.
I am not a morning person, and I was so excited about writing this mermaid fantasy, that I woke up at 6:30 this morning to get started on writing as early as possible! As I am writing this up now, it is midday and I have already gotten in 2,500 words for the day. I am only taking a break so that I can get this post up and update you on my week!
These writing updates are really holding me accountable; to have something to talk about each week, I need to be writing. Not only this though, I am also finding out some of my weaknesses and strengths by exploring them in these types of posts. I hope I can continue to do them and learn more and more about myself and my writing journey with every post.
How did your writing go this week? And let me know your thoughts on swapping out projects!
Kira Jeanette 
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