Spinning Wheels

It’s been a rough few weeks.

Normally, I have at least the germ of the idea for these posts early in the week. This week, though, I’ve barely felt human for more than a couple of hours at a time.

I’m not going to rehash everything that’s been going on with me. This isn’t really the place for that.

I’m in sort of a weird spot in a lot of ways, but, this being my writing blog and all, I’ll focus on the weird spot I’m in with writing.

(Though the argument could be made that I’m always in a weird spot with my writing, but that’s a different post entirely.)

With the first draft of Project 2016 finished, I’m in a sort of in-between space. I’ve finished a draft and am waiting on edits—I’m not far enough removed to be able to effectively go back over it with a critical eye. And I’m not sure that I’m ready to dive into a new novel. There’s not a ton of heavy new writing for me to do under these circumstances.

But I don’t want to get out of the habit of writing.

Part of this is a productivity thing—if I let myself get out of the habit, it’ll take weeks to work myself back into it, and even then, there’s no guarantee that I’ll have retained the skill improvements that daily writing has led to.

And part of it is about my mental state. Like I said, it’s been a rough few weeks. It’s been hard for me to do much of anything lately. Two things will happen if I stop writing now. The first is that I’ll likely let me time get away from me and I’ll be months or years before I work on anything again. The second is that, if I don’t make myself write each day, then I don’t do anything. The few hours that I’ve been active each day have largely been spent outlining projects or free writing. (And doing the bare minimum of work for my real job.)

The draft is done, but I have to keep spinning my wheels—for my writing’s sake and for mine. So I pound out a few hundred words every day.

And I post on the blog according to schedule, even though I don’t feel like I have much to say.

The world keeps turning.