NaNoWriMo came and went, it ended with a fizzle for me. I had 45,000 words on the 25th and considered myself "Oh SO CONFIDENT"; then I deleted 20,000 words after a day's break from the writing. Why did I do that? I didn't cut and paste into a new document - I DELETED THE WORDS! I am a self-sabotager of the worst kind.
I wrote furiously from the 27th until the 30th, but furiously for me - with a sick baby, a sick 10 year old, a sick me and a sick husband who had to go to work - well, that translates to about 3 or 4 hours a day. I average 1000 words an hour. It wasn't going to happen.
Since my epic failure, I have been licking my wounds. And thinking about my worst enemy - myself. I made it to 47,000 words; but that doesn't really matter, does it? I failed.
Do any of you struggle with self-sabotage? Do you find yourself becoming your own worst enemy - in relation to your writing, or anything else in your life? I'd be curious to see if this is unique to me; or if, perhaps, all writers (and humans) suffer with this a bit. As part of the great Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group, I'd love to read whether any of you have ever dealt with this?
Can't wait to hear from you all!
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I am not certain what my final count was. I too did a major delete. I could have copied and pasted past posts into the book but I decided it was better to like what I had written. I'm new here... visiting from the Insecure Writers Group.
ReplyDeleteI once hired someone to edit my work. I gave her the first chapter of my book. She attacked the first paragraph - said I needed to include what type of business I had when I said "we are together again, just as we often are, on the front porch of the office" ...or something along those lines. I then spent the next 3 months trying to expand on that and I couldn't do it. Needless to say, she was not the right editor for me. I try to let it flow but I need feedback, which is why I blog. I'm starting to know when my voice is ON. But I still spend a lot of time with self doubt. Okay, thats enough of me... Best to you, Shannon
@Shannon: I thought about "fudging" it at the end, but I kept thinking "to what purpose?" I would just have been lying to myself and so, ultimately, I just decided to stick with honesty - and fail. It sucks. I have a book swap scheduled with a reader of mine, I'm hoping that it will be an amazing experience. I've actually never had anyone read or edit my work before, so since I'm so new; I can only hope for the best!
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting today, I hope you return!
Heather
I don't suffer from self-sabotage per se. When I tear apart stories, I save them in their own document files. That's what I think you should do.
ReplyDeleteWow, deleting 20,000 words, yikes! I don't think I could ever do that, but I have sabotaged myself many times in regards to my writing, mostly with querying or being too anxious to have an agent read my manuscript when it wasn't ready. Still, that's a bridge burned, an opportunity lost. So I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteBTW - I'm a new follower via Alex's IWSG. I try to find a few new blogs to follow every month.
That wasn't failure - you went way over 50,000 all together.
ReplyDeleteLook at the bright side - what you had to re-write is probably better.
This is the only thing I don't like about NaNo, people who think they've somehow 'failed' if they don't hit the magic 50k. In the first place, what Alex said is right - you wrote way more than that. In the second place you need to think about how many words of your story you would have written if you weren't doing NaNo. I'm going to bet that it would have been less than 47k. That makes you a winner in my book.
ReplyDeleteBut next time - don't delete - save elsewhere :-)
I'm still working out in my head the epic fail. If I understand correctly, you actually had to go back and write the additional words which would actually be over 50k. Plus, you mentioned having a daily goal of writing something everyday. Sounds like you won to me. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI am the queen of self sabotage. Maybe my fear of failure leads to my resistance to take action. My novella was finished in August. Since then I've been putzing around haven't published it yet due to one excuse after another.
ReplyDeleteI tried NaNo last year. I think I wrote 3k in my NaNo book before calling it quits and working on the stuff that really NEEDED my attention. I don't consider that failure, more prioritizing.