NaNoWriMo Week 2 : November is Hell

Week 2 of NaNoWriMo brought a revelation that I have possibly blocked out since last year. November is Hell. It is the busiest month at my day job, with fifty-plus hour weeks being the norm. On top of that, I have this Baty guy who seems to think that I need to pound out fifty thousands words to prove to myself that I have what it takes.

That is what November is really about, trucking my way through Hell. This year has been particularly bad. My job has never been more demanding for such an extended period of time. I come home exhausted, sometimes after working all day and all night, only to find a keyboard waiting for me, along with that stupid little NaNoWriMo graph that is mocking me, calling me worthless and questioning my dedication to my art.

“You call yourself a writer?!”

Screw you, you little piece of digital graph crap!

So…things are not going well. Today I wrote over 3600 words and I am still about a thousand behind the pace. The story is going well. I am excited about Very Dangerous People, and I am having fun now that I am working in the Lovecraftian elements, slowly adding a supernatural element to what has been a straight-forward world by this point. I have no problems with the quality, or lack there of (it is a first draft, after all). I just wish I had more time to invest in it, more time to think about the story and develop it away from the keyboard instead of chasing it down at roughly 70 words per minute.

This week is another of hellish proportions before I take a week off to do nothing but write. Obviously, I should be able to make up any work that I am behind over the time off I will be getting between vacation and then Thanksgiving the following week. That being said, I have a hard time psychologically with behind behind or being late, and the sooner that I pull myself back into the expected range, the happier I will be.

I’ll see you all on the other side of Hell.

Current word count, as of Monday night: 15,827.

Jack Campbell, Jr.

Jack Campbell, Jr. is a dark fiction writer in Lawrence, KS. His writing has appeared in various venues including Twenty 3 Magazine, Danse Macabre, and Insomnia Press. He writes about reading, writing, and life on his blog at www.jackcampbelljr.com.