A month in a writer’s life seems like a significant amount of time. Yet, when I blinked on the first of April, the month was suddenly coming to an end already. Even though we unpacked and settled in fairly quickly after our move across the continent, April was far from being back to the routine. I wasn’t overly busy, but the mind space needed to sort out all the bureaucratic problems that arose over time consumed a lot of my focus. It’s enough to say that swapping our driving licenses, a task that should have taken us one visit to DMV, took a month, multiple visits, and was only resolved because of… Twitter. Other issues might not have been that time consuming, but they did contribute to my general lack of progress this month.
Writing
As you might remember, even though I managed to write every day in March, I ended the month being 6000 words behind. So my primary goal for April was to catch up. I managed to write every day, but getting to my monthly goal was a bit trickier. With no focus, I fell behind mid-April, and only a push at the end of the month saved me from missing my goal once again. I’m still those 6000 words behind, but at least I ended April in black numbers.
I also managed to reach the end of Myth-touched, a sequel to Humanborn. I intentionally don’t say anything about finishing the first draft. Even though I wrote the last sentence, the story is missing quite a few details in the middle, and about 30,000 words to be a full-sized novel. But at least I have the whole structure in place, so as I add the missing pieces, I can also evaluate such things as pacing.
Camp NaNoWriMo
April was also supposed to be my revision month. Back in March, I tentatively signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, hoping to do revisions of one of my romance novels. It turned out that a mind focused on real life isn’t a mind ready for a meticulous work with text. As a result, I failed the Camp. At the same time, I’m not really upset about it since it was the last thing at my priority list. I do hope that I’ll be able to get back to those revisions around July’s camp, or maybe even sooner.
Art and creativity
I didn’t finish any designs, though I played around sketching some ideas. One of them was nagging me, so I focused on it, but so far every approach I took, didn’t seem to be working. I ended up redrawing it several times, but so far I didn’t get to anything that I would like.
A writer’s life in April
Busy with the paperwork and other life-related things, we didn’t do much in terms of sight-seeing or getting to know our area yet. As the weather becomes nicer
All things considering, I don’t think April was a complete loss. After all, between settling in and looking for a day job, I managed to reach my monthly word count goal, and some days late but I reached the quarter of my yearly goal.
As we’re planning for Virginia to be our last stop when it comes to moving places, I hope to rebuild my shaky routine and get back in the saddle in the coming months. Unless, of course, life brings more surprises down the road.
How about you? How was your April?
I’m awestruck, given the major move you made – without much notice and the shedload of footling tasks that always accompanies such upheavals – that you have managed to keep your writing routine going. To be honest, I’d expected that all your main projects would be on hold for at least until the end of May… So the fact that you have managed to keep up with some of your main aims and complete the first draft of Myth-touched is impressive!
I hope that May is being kind to you and finally you will get a chance to explore your surroundings:)).
Thank you, Sarah. I guess writing is a serious thing for me, so I can’t easily justify not writing, though I’ve been taking it a bit slower in May.
Yeah…. The DMV (or what we call the RMV here in Massachusetts) was bogged down with all kinds of issues nationwide in April. When I bought a new car around the end of that month, I couldn’t get my vehicle registration right away for the same reason. The dealership had to snail-mail it to me a day or two later. :/ So I understand your frustrations there.
And I have to echo what Sarah said about being able to keep up a writing routine despite the move and any related stresses. It’s not easy to do when you’re dealing with upheaval or having trouble concentrating. But you still managed it – and finished Myth-touched while you were at it. (Congrats, btw! Is this the first draft, or revisions / editing of a later draft?) I’m sure your focus will improve and things will go more smoothly once you’ve have more time to settle in and take care of things in your new home. 🙂
Bureaucracy always slows everyone and everything down, doesn’t it? I hope the rest of things related to your new car went smoothly and you’re enjoying it now.
And thank you. It’s the, well, “zero” draft, I guess, as being 30k words short, I wouldn’t call it the first draft. But it still felt good to get out the whole structure and see how it works (or doesn’t). Now I just need to fill in the missing bits.
Life sometimes does get in the way, and although you may not feel you haven’t achieved much, you’ve achieved a phenomenal amount considering everything else you’ve had to do!
Congrats you super woman you!
Thank you, Bee. 🙂