Back On The Wagon

Since the last time I wrote a ROW80 update, I’ve fallen off the wagon pretty hard. The week of August 15th I managed to scrape together 3,093 words, but the following week I plunged down to 1,072 words, and the week after, last week, I wrote 773 words, all on Monday. And we won’t even talk about the going-to-bed-on-time goal. I could blame a lot of things–a couple of infections, a hurricane/tropical storm that knocked our power out for34 hours–but the truth is I stumbled, then fell down, then lay there for a while. I hit a point in outlining my work-in-progress where I had to stop and do research. Ideally, I would have done that research a while ago, but I didn’t, and it came back to bite me. I tried to push through it, but I just got to the point where I couldn’t move forward. I had to inter-library loan a book and while I was waiting I stopped working. I could have revised my goals or focused on a different part of my WIP while I was waiting, but instead I just kind of threw in the towel. Maybe I needed a break after six weeks of pretty steady progress, I don’t know. If that is the case, I’ll have to do a better job of building in mini breaks as I work so that I don’t just come crashing to a halt and lose so much precious time.

But enough whining. When we fall off the horse, or the wagon, or the chair where we sit when we write, we can lay on the ground and complain and be miserable, or we can pick ourselves back up and get back in it. ROW80 is, amazingly, almost over. Even with two pretty much worthless weeks I’ve still done way more work than I did in the weeks before the challenge. We’ve got just about two weeks left and I’m going to do my darnedest to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

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