FAWM 2011 - victory dance

At least to my mind, fourteen songs written in one month doesn't sound nearly as impressive as 50 thousand words. It especially doesn't sound as impressive as 135k--my NaNo for last year. And yet, with my just-under-one-day-early completion of FAWM, there's this warm little glow in my chest that says not only that I won, but that I accomplished what I set out to do, which was something fairly new and somewhat scary to me.

250 words a day

I really can't wait for school to be out. Not that I'm not enjoying it (well, except for that ridiculously stupid Microsoft Tech class which is required for the Computer credit of a General ED degree), but having to wake up every morning really is starting to kill me. I am a night person; I hit my creative peak at about 3 am. So when I'm lying in bed at that time, trying to sleep, and instead thinking of things I could make for my etsy shop, it isn't a good thing.

During the summer, my schedule is somewhere along the lines of sleeping until seven to ten pm, then staying up for twelve hours, and sleeping for another twelve, etc. It naturally reverts this way during the weekend too, although recently it's been more like force myself out of bed at twelve hours because I don't want to mess up my sleep schedule too desperately. Maybe it's not healthy to be able and willing to sleep for 18 hours straight, but that's just how I am I guess.

But anyway, the one thing that it's been good for is I've been getting my writing done in bed every night, using the apps I downloaded for my phone (mentioned in the last post). So here's my stats as far as this week has gone, even though it hasn't yet been a full week since I made the goal to write like this:

2/19: 627 words

2/20: 680 words

2/21: 428 words

2/22: 628 words

2/23: 416 words

2/24: 282 words

The point of showing this is that my word goal all along has been one page a day, or 250 words; most nights I've either doubled that, or gotten pretty close to doing so. Last year, when I crashed and burned at attempting WriYe, I had the goal to write 1667 words a day so I could complete about a NaNo a month.

Ha. Depression and writer's block quickly saw to that goal, and each day I didn't meet it I felt more depressed about missing it, and less apt to write--vicious cycle. But then I saw this page and was inspired. So even though I know I'm capable of crazy amounts of writing, such as 15,000 words in one day last NaNo, trying to push for even the 1000 mark when my moods are so completely unpredictable from day to day is just setting myself up for failure. So I'm shooting for that low goal at the bare minimum, and most days doing much much better. Maybe I'll switch to the 500 one at some point, but for now, with school and everything, I'm good for that low mark.

Now, I don't really know why I'm posting about this; it's been shown quite often that when I make a big commitment to something, then post it on my blog, it fails. But I'm still going strong in FAWM, with only 2 songs left to write and 3 (and a half) days to do it in. So maybe I can break the cycle, and keep to my writing goal this time.

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Listening to: Hour like a Vega Sympathy by Danica West. Yep. My own song is stuck in my head. Kind sad. :)

LTUE and FAWM (acronym soup)

I just got back from LTUE (Life, The Universe, and Everything) and I already can't believe I have to wait an entire year before it happens again. LTUE is a magic place for creative people, especially writers, filled with support and tips, fun and friends.