I didn’t give much thought to the 250 mark, so the 750 mark isn’t that much different in that regard. I write a lot of my stories with a version of the Hero’s Journey in mind, using various fiction-theory totems as my guide, such as The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and of course Save the Cat. In the latter, a 110 page manuscript is broken down into elements that occur on certain pages, which I’ve found a useful concept to work into novels as have many others. Granted a thousand days worth of 110 pages wouldn’t have All Is Lost on day 750 – ominously that would lie just ahead – but it’s more or less now.
Ok so that’s over dramatic. I’m still going, and I’m still writing a lot, even if I am struggling to reclaim the 1,100 a day average. My head however is not quite so rosy, is in fact in yet another spiral that this time I can’t point to upheaval, grief or self-inflicted torment to explain. I am as I have many times in my life experiencing a mental health lull, and these are at their worst like this one, times which make writing a lot harder. That’s not unique of course; they make everything harder to do. It took so much willpower to make it through the working day that I went out-of-body for the last six or so hours.
These are the hardest days to hit target, and in a fitting boogeyman’s return, TWR hitting 60,000 is starting to leave me in a bit of a limbo what I am supposed to have happen next with the story. Self esteem dropping equals a lot of second guessing, and this on top of the fact that it’s hard to keep every thread straight in my mind as I do work on it, which is in an ironic twist what my protagonist is experiencing in character. I’ll get past this, but it is a little infuriating that I couldn’t just fix this with my week and a bit off work. Or, maybe it was naïve to think that would fix anything.
So a low note for 750. When I hit 750 words for target, I tend to feel a smaller version of that ‘sprint to the finish’ second wind that I get near the end of a novel as a whole. Of course day 1,000 won’t be the end of anything, but I do hope that when I reach that milestone, I can celebrate it with a little more cheer and optimism than I feel right now. It is amusing to realise that day is less than a year away. Just one more reason to pray for a swift end to this year.
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