As someone with AuDHD, I live and die by schedules. I wake up around the same time every day (unless of course my IBS kicks in between 4-5am). Eat roughly the same thing at the same time for breakfast. Same for lunch. The best time for me to work is between lunch and dinner, while dad is resting. I eat dinner around the same time though it varies, and go to bed around the same time. Then things get nebulous. What happens when I wake up throughout the night and don’t get good sleep? What happens when I’m not feeling well and have to rest rather than take my sliver of work time? What happens when I get stuck in the loop of being tired and needing naps and ruining my sleep because I napped too long and then need another nap the next day…so on and so forth.

What happens when I fuck my schedule (or when life fucks it, really)?

I’ve spoken before about the trials and tribulations about the last couple of years, but the truth was, even when things were okay, I still was struggling to get back to writing. I want to write. I have to write. I’m happy when I’m pouring my heart and soul onto the page. But I was stuck. I was mad at myself because I couldn’t write the way I used to. I used to write in the afternoon without needing to rest, and write into the late hours without my sleep being too affected. That’s not my reality anymore, and I needed to change to fit how my life looks now.

Last month I decided enough was enough. I wasn’t writing because I was waiting for the perfect conditions in order to write large amounts rather than writing consistently. The perfect conditions don’t exist. So, I changed how I approached writing. I decided that I needed to write something everyday. No word count goals. No pressure. It could just be a sentence or some notes, and that would count. I wrote at my desk on days that I could, and days where I was tired and needed more rest, I wrote on my phone while lying in bed or sitting on the couch. It was working. Every day I felt accomplished because I was meeting this goal for myself and as the month went on, I felt myself being able to hit daily word counts I hadn’t seen in awhile.

Finally.

Now it’s on to the next step. Training myself to hit targets again. November is NaNo even if NaNo doesn’t technically exist anymore. Plenty of people still put together challenges in their own writing groups or do solo challenges. Now, I’m not foolish enough to think I can bang out 50k in a month without some serious consequences. I’m not interesting in crashing…again. I will be shooting for a more attainable 20k with a roughly 700/day word count goal until I meet the monthly target. If I go over, awesome! If I don’t, that’s also okay. While reaching for this goal, I will also be challenging myself to finish act two of UNTETHERED. I am roughly halfway so it’s entirely doable.

Part of what helped me to reach my goal of consistency was a set of October prompts put together by fellow author H.S. Wolfe. Wolfe is a godsend for the indie author community especially those who touch on taboo topics, and is one of the owners of the Monster Manor discord. I used these prompts to write flash fiction and meet my goals of writing something daily when I couldn’t work on any of my larger projects. I posted these prompts on my Instagram and my Medium page. They were incredibly fun to write!

It’s my birthday! I turn 34 today and I will spending the day doing a whole lot of nothing, and eating my favorite “dinner” which is sausage gravy over biscuits with eggs and home fries. To celebrate I am making all of my books in my Payhip store Pay What You Want! Times are hard so if you’ve been wanting to get my books for yourself and or to gift to your friends, they will be available as PWYW for today only!

I’m playing Alan Wake 2 again. I’m finally playing The Final Draft and revisiting one of my favorite games. While the Alan Wake games (and Control) are more of an inspiration for The Hermetic Verses series that I have up my sleeve, the overall narrative of fighting against a story is all too real. Maybe when I finish it this time, I’ll get around to writing my essay about the madness of a manuscript and the absolute fever dream of being an author.

“I brought you the heart, witch. Now show me the terror.”

I’ve also been keeping up with my reading. My words are a deep well and when the well runs dry it must be refilled. Now that I’m reading regularly again, I am having an easier time wrangling my words. I read some seriously chunky books this month. Many of them containing a similar question: what does it mean to be alive? Human? I swear I didn’t plan it that way.

See y’all next month with, what I hope is, a great update!