November conundrums
Oct. 25th, 2009 11:30 pmNovember is fast approaching, and I need to decide what to do about it.
For the past three years, I have participated in NaBloWriMo -- one substantial post every day in the month of November. In 2006 and 2007, I found this very satisfying, but last year it felt more like a chore, and this year I am finding myself at something of a loss. I haven't been posting to LJ nearly as much in recent months, and I don't know how well motivated I would be to suddenly put myself back on a daily schedule.
The first question to ask myself, of course, is why I haven't been posting. Part of it, I think, is that I've moved a lot of the random life stuff to Twitter. (Reminder: iamkj. I promise I am low-volume, rarely more than 2-3 tweets per day.) One big factor there is that I've found a Twitter app I like a lot for the iPhone (Twitterrific), whereas LJ.app and the LJ mobile web interface both suck. And I don't use that word lightly. We're talking gigantic vacuum cleaners worth of suck here. About the only thing I like about it is the ease of uploading pictures from the phone. I'm also trying to do less random webstuff on my work computer, which also leads me to spend more time on the iPhone, and therefore less on LJ
The other problem is that I just don't feel like my life is that interesting right now. There are all kinds of various stressful things going on, but I would have to write pages and pages of background to explain them, which would probably bore everyone to death. Mostly it's continual low-grade stress, which is the very worst kind to deal with for me, because it's not so bad that it motivates me to fix the things that are wrong, and in many cases the issues aren't mine to fix anyway. Just the thought of sitting down to write the whole thing up is exhausting. But it also saps my energy to write about other things, too.
Still, I do want to write in November. I am big on traditions, and NaBloWriMo has become a tradition for me. I can't imagine skipping it entirely. NaNoWriMo isn't an option, unfortunately; November is a concert and family holiday month, so I can't make that kind of time commitment, and I don't have any novel-length stories in the works anyway. One option is something like I did last January: writing every day with specific short-term goals in mind and keeping track of my progress, but not necessarily posting something every day. Another possibility is doing a hybrid, where I write every day, make daily posts about my progress (along the lines of the hashtag that some of us use on Twitter, #thewritestuff -- although amusingly, that hashtag has recently been hijacked by a Twilight fic!) and focus on finishing and posting stories as I can. If I did that, though, I would want to make a point of posting non-fic related stuff as well, and then we're back to the daily general posting.
Which brings me full circle, and makes me wonder whether I'm not thinking about this all wrong. Maybe I should be looking at this as an opportunity to get back into regular blogging about the things I care about: politics, media, librarianship, cats, and yes, fic and fandom. Not a chore, but a treat. I will mull on this some more.
Fortunately I still have a few days to decide.
For the past three years, I have participated in NaBloWriMo -- one substantial post every day in the month of November. In 2006 and 2007, I found this very satisfying, but last year it felt more like a chore, and this year I am finding myself at something of a loss. I haven't been posting to LJ nearly as much in recent months, and I don't know how well motivated I would be to suddenly put myself back on a daily schedule.
The first question to ask myself, of course, is why I haven't been posting. Part of it, I think, is that I've moved a lot of the random life stuff to Twitter. (Reminder: iamkj. I promise I am low-volume, rarely more than 2-3 tweets per day.) One big factor there is that I've found a Twitter app I like a lot for the iPhone (Twitterrific), whereas LJ.app and the LJ mobile web interface both suck. And I don't use that word lightly. We're talking gigantic vacuum cleaners worth of suck here. About the only thing I like about it is the ease of uploading pictures from the phone. I'm also trying to do less random webstuff on my work computer, which also leads me to spend more time on the iPhone, and therefore less on LJ
The other problem is that I just don't feel like my life is that interesting right now. There are all kinds of various stressful things going on, but I would have to write pages and pages of background to explain them, which would probably bore everyone to death. Mostly it's continual low-grade stress, which is the very worst kind to deal with for me, because it's not so bad that it motivates me to fix the things that are wrong, and in many cases the issues aren't mine to fix anyway. Just the thought of sitting down to write the whole thing up is exhausting. But it also saps my energy to write about other things, too.
Still, I do want to write in November. I am big on traditions, and NaBloWriMo has become a tradition for me. I can't imagine skipping it entirely. NaNoWriMo isn't an option, unfortunately; November is a concert and family holiday month, so I can't make that kind of time commitment, and I don't have any novel-length stories in the works anyway. One option is something like I did last January: writing every day with specific short-term goals in mind and keeping track of my progress, but not necessarily posting something every day. Another possibility is doing a hybrid, where I write every day, make daily posts about my progress (along the lines of the hashtag that some of us use on Twitter, #thewritestuff -- although amusingly, that hashtag has recently been hijacked by a Twilight fic!) and focus on finishing and posting stories as I can. If I did that, though, I would want to make a point of posting non-fic related stuff as well, and then we're back to the daily general posting.
Which brings me full circle, and makes me wonder whether I'm not thinking about this all wrong. Maybe I should be looking at this as an opportunity to get back into regular blogging about the things I care about: politics, media, librarianship, cats, and yes, fic and fandom. Not a chore, but a treat. I will mull on this some more.
Fortunately I still have a few days to decide.
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