November Intervention

Hello everyone, and welcome to November!

No, I didn’t intend to be here today. I was planning on relaxing, far away from this blog and basking in the glory of completing Blogtober. Then tomorrow, fresh-faced and raring to go, I would strive onward into my brand new writing routine for November. Words would be written. Art would be produced. Progress would be achieved.

I even put a counter on the sidebar of my website in preparation for all the words. Dang, I’m productive.

And then I started thinking about all that writing, all those words, all that work… and something didn’t feel good inside me.

I felt that familiar creeping feeling.

Writer’s block.*

*(please read this with as much disdain in your mind as possible)

I can recognise it now. It’s almost like an anxiety, a tensing of my artistic muscle, a small voice in my head that says but that’s hard, why would you do that?

It usually happens around chapter 5 when I am writing a novel. I stare at the words, frozen, unable to add anymore.

(Fun game: Guess which chapter I am at in my draft)

I also knew that I was feeling off because I ate my weight in chocolate biscuits – a usual sign that I am trying to cope with something negative in my brain.

Also that’s my bad for working with a packet of chocolate Hob Nobs right next to me. Terrible idea. How could anyone resist?

Anyway, this is an intervention by myself to myself.

Don’t listen to the voice, Richard. You can do this – you just did Blogtober. How hard can one little novel be?

And it’s not even a while novel. It’s just a chapter. A paragraph. A sentence. A word.

It’s baby steps.

As someone said in a writing event I recently attended: I’m not trying eat a whole elephant, I’m just eating it one toenail at a time.

(the event was with WritersHQ, if you’re interested in checking them out. I only have a free membership, so I can’t comment on how often they encourage you to eat elephant toenails in their other events, but their newsletter is very fun).

Here’s to a November full of words!

And… elephant toenails, I guess? Eww.