Writing Journal 6.26.2021: On deadline and… maybe turning things around? (Last week still sucked – the worst this year.)

[PHOTO NOTE: Did another Pexels search on procrastination, and I got this image.]

There’s not too many ways I can sugarcoat this – my writing productivity has sucked all this week and honestly this month. I know for a fact that this month will be the worst of the year and will likely bring my averages down for sure.

What I am going through is not a writing block but writing procrastination. I know exactly what I want to write, but I don’t want to get down to the grinding business of actually putting it down. Trust me, I know a bit about procrastination. But, maybe it can be a good thing for the creative process, like this article in LitHub discusses.

Why it’s effecting me is a totally different question. To be honest, I have finished a really rough school year of teaching – so rough, in fact, that I decided about halfway through the year not to return after my contract was up. For a while, I questioned whether I should remain in teaching at all, but I have decided to see if I can continue either full time or part time with another district. I want to see if it was the place that was the reason for that dread and not something else.

So, trying to recover from all that has been an issue. The other issue is that I have been working on some of this fan fiction for a while, and maybe I’ve gotten somewhat tired of having it in my head. In the new writer’s group I joined in Des Moines, one writer talked about how she preferred not to plot out too heavily in advance in writing because she found that she had often gotten tired of the story before she had even written it. By that, I think she meant that the story wasn’t as fresh to her as it could have been. I think I can relate to that, although I won’t give up on the story I’m telling, though.

I’m about 20 minutes before the end of Saturday, so I need to wrap stuff up before I hit my deadline.

Keep an eye on this page – I will be mentioning the first in-person event and meet and greet I’ll have hosted in… a long time, with both my move out to South Central Iowa (Chariton) and the whole COVID mess. I will have details in the next blog or two that I do.

Again, my record for last week was the worst weekly total I have had all year. However, I took a look at some of the preliminary numbers I have for the current week. I’m definitely on the upswing, and I’m easily going to have the best week I’ve had all month,

Anyway, here are the numbers. Keep safe out there, and talk with you soon.

PS – I was having some trouble with cross-posting these blogs to my Twitter handle. I think I’ve sorted that out.

Writing statistics for the week ending 6.19.2021:

+856 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 30 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 1 of 7 days.