So this has been me for the past week. · 1:57am Dec 1st, 2016
Its been a hell of a ride.
Before you ask, no I did not reach the deadline in the month I had to do the NaNoWriMo competition, I did however write 41,647 words as of 11:59PM Irish time. Of which I am ashamed.
Ashamed because 37,903 of those were written within the last week. 28,886 in the last three days alone. And the story has only begun its second act. The worst part is, not only did I wake up around 20 to 10 this morning, I went back to sleep deliberately, got up at 2 to twelve and proceeded to faff the fuck around for around six hours, only getting around 3000 words done by 6pm. You have no idea how much this fucking triggers me. I not only could have reached that deadline, but exceeded it if only I had put in the same diligence I did just yesterday and did not fuck around.
I think it'll surprise none of you I have been having some difficulties this past year, which I won't go into. But suffice to say it left me with a severe lack of belief in my own abilities and continual self deprecation and criticisms that, I will not lie, almost made me give up on Bad Mondays, and writing in general. In some ways, writing this NaNoWriMo confirmed some of those fears as the story retreaded some familiar elements from my other work when I pictured it going very differently in my mind, something which very nearly made me abandon the project in frustration.
As it stands, I honestly thank God I did it and for giving me the time when I asked because the purpose of me doing it was to prove something to myself after a year: That I can do it. Nothing else. Not that it is done well, that can come with time, practice, editing and feedback. Not that it is particularly good, so many elements go into making something good that its hard to properly quantify and this story is not good. I did it to prove I had the endurance, mental fortitude and, if I push myself, the diligence to simply produce once again. Like I said there was a lot I had problems with, its pacing, its lacklustre content, how boring it could be at times, overly specific detailing that details nothing much at all, the fact I kept having flashbacks to how my shitty pony fanfiction which I began as writing practice over three years ago has some elements inadvertently popped up in how similar they seemed to me. I know it wouldn't matter to an impartial reader but it bothered me alot.
Again, I know all that and that wasnt the point but argh!
I know that seems ridiculous to some of you to let your eyes wander to the right of the screen and take note of Bad Monday's word count but it really was trying for me to sit down, stare at a document and just... have nothing come from you. Not even the desire to write beyond a vague intellectual desire that slipped farther and farther from you day by day. Nothing was going my way this year and it seemed the more I tried to do things to change my situation, in physical and mental terms, the more things stagnated. I felt trapped.
It was, oddly enough, Somber's blog posts that gave me the push I needed.
I saw Somber, who let us be frank, is perpetually disparaging of his own work regardless of its quality or his own abilities to produce it (and give the man the credit he has rightly earned, he has produced a lot). I then saw him pump out no fewer than three full chapters by the end of the first week. I figured, if he can summon the drive, however discourage, to actually produce that much content in that short a time span, then damnit, so could I.
So I picked a document with hardly any words on it I planned to delete and rewrite that had been wasting away in my google documents since September, aaaaand promptly did nothing with it until the 15th.
Yeah. It was that bad.
I touched upon the first chapter bit by bit until finally going hell for leather on the 22nd. My only regret is the two days where I did not get anything done and my faffing around earlier today as it seemed every ghost possible haunted me
I don't know what this means in the long term. But right now, it means I have accomplished something and proven to myself that I can do it. Whether I should do it or not is up to my poor, poor, amazon reviewers in my near future if I press ahead and become an actual author. That said, you all can finally, finally, look forward to a long overdue update to Bad Mondays this Monday, come Hell or High Water. I'm sorry it has been so long in coming.
For those curious, here is my shitty sci fi story, up until the final word I wrote at 11:59, haven't opted to :
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Oh man, I already love your story. But man, that P.S. message made my day.
Seriously, you're the best
4324164 it's been like that for me pretty much the last two years. I have almost twenty story docs where I haven't even gotten past the first act. When I force myself to add to them, I have to fight for paragraphs. Wish I had some people's discipline.
Still reading, but have the obligatory:
wut
Just know that people so love your work. Seriously. My day is always brightens when I see your work has updated.
That video was amazing.
Somber? Oh. The guy that wrote Project Horizons. Glad you're alright, Handy.
Was almost worried about you being slapped in the head by
crowbarswork responsibilities.But you know what. Since we're doing Initial D here...
4324241 Your day? My pants.
Brighten? Jizz.
4324241 I am always glad to hear it, I am just saying that knowledge alone has not been helping me in these troubles, but I am still glad of it.
4324233 When in doubt, blame the resident shitposter.
4324215 I was wondering why I hadn't seen one like this floating around yet.
4324179 You can do what I did. Take the time to actually sit down and tell yourself over and over that you can do it, that you will do it and that you want to do it. And then, when you feel that slightest but of will or confidence: seize upon it, hammer it home, and write, Repeat as necessary until you have done what you set out to do. Then wonder how you did it.
4324164 I know. Its hard.
4324144 Always good to know I caused a smile or two.
I like to act out my different characters while I take a cig break. I also carry around small notebooks and moleskines like an obsessive-compulsive freak. Ideas come and go, but they all stay there in the notebooks. Not everything needs to be made into a story.
Nice.
Niiice.
I was honestly expecting this to happen sooner or later. When I read earlier posts about some shit going down in your life I was fully expecting you to go the way of dozens of other authors who had the same problems and disappear. I know it sounds like I have no faith in you, but faith becomes a bit of a rare commodity when that faith so often ends up misplaced and the author(s) you've been waiting on never come back.
#SomeoneReadsThem
And this is why I think you are one of the best authors on the site. You didn't throw your arms up and quit after the first bit of frustration. Also reading your story doesn't make me want to pull my own eyes out. That helps too.
4324465
Can't argue with that!
People these days have no respect, I live on a very busy four lane street and since early November I've had Handyman signs in my lawn, one lasted about a month and then got stolen, then I went back to the store and got two more just in case it happened again and would you look at that, I get up this morning and my second sign was gone after just a week out at the street.
I don't care how people feel about fanfictions, but however that may be it doesn't give you a right to steal signs, If you're that butthurt about Handyman's far superior writing then go do something productive about it, steal my sign and there will be another one within a business day.
It's a labor of love, Handyman can't cancel Bad Mondays, in my mind it will be the end of the world as we know it. His story creates joy in all the readers, and the other authors will continue to bombard us with their bullshit.
This is the world's last chance to stand up to this corrupt writing structure, you can see with your own eyes how afraid of Handyman those in power on FimFiction are by the amount of constant smears and lies told of him on this website with complete disregard for the other authors many crimes, acts of treason, and betrayals of the readers for their own personal popularity gain as well as their mindless followers stripping lawns of Handyman signs and thereby limiting free speech and expression.
The comments are rigged, the feature box probably will be too, my confidence and those of so many other readers will count for nothing, but a sign in my lawn and a loud voice of reason is all I can do to save this world from this absolute devil of a writer organization and its followers cronies.
So it appears the comment I thought I had posted over lunch never made it. Fuck.
[insert 45 minutes of praise and constructive criticism here]
Well a few questions/minor criticisms. One, Aterix shrugs, that is not even a universal human gesture so it seems really weird for an extraterrestrial with a completely different morphology to use it. Two, was the translator using words that Rorrie never said? I got that impression though I don't know how much he sang to it. So basically chapter five had some mild head scratchers, otherwise it was pretty readable, especially for a first draft.
2 more days! #MondayIsComing
Hmm....
Well, 'tis technically still Monday here. Maybe it's still coming?
I don't appreciate that sudden cut in dialogue from chapter 6. Even if this "nanomachines" competition of yours is over, you should heavily consider continuing The Rains of Orion if you weren't as a sort of side project in between BM updates. It's an enjoyable read.
4331822 The cutoff was where I was at exactly 11:59pm on the deadline.
In any case I a not abandoning Rains at this point but I am, however, rewriting it. Far too much of how it came out bothers me.
Hell or High Water, man. Come on.... You can do this!
UUUUWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
4337407 Keep your fingers crossed.
4324215 What was this? All I know is that YouTube says it was hate speech
4345811 It was the clip at 0:15 here