Write Every Day, June Day #26

[auroracloud]

Thought I should link to this, via marthawells who also has an essay in it. The Writer's Book of Doubt. It's coming out next month. I think I'm going to need it. Here's the blurb:

Impostor syndrome. Thinking that your writing sucks. Feeling targeted by the rejection cannon. Despairing that no one is ever going to read your stories. Lost in Submissionland. Overwhelmed by radioactive brain weasels.

The Writer’s Book of Doubt contains practical advice and inspiration for dealing with the problems of the writing life.


I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that description resonates. And the collection of writers sounds like people whose words I actually do want to hear (well, read).

Still have mostly spent the day in bad brain chemistry land, but there have been better moments, and at least I've been taking care of myself and taking things off my schedule for the next days.

Today's Writing

At one point I managed to read fairly much novel research and make notes about it. As for things that actually add to my word count, I added a bit to a supporting character sheet, and I now continued one of my many unfinished fanfics. This one's more just stream-of-thought about characters rather than a story, but who knows, maybe I can make it into something at some point. Nothing else was inspiring me.

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, luzclarita, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, used_songs, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, used_songs, ysilme

Day 4: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, shopfront, sylvanwitch, tinx_r, ysilme

Day 5: alexseanchai, alexcat, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether, ysilme

Day 6: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, ofmonstrouswords, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme

Day 7: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, ysilme, yantantether (15 so far)

Day 8: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ellieet, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme (14 so far)

Day 9: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 10: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, navaan, ofmonstrouswords, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (16 so far)

Day 11: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, navaan, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (17 so far)

Day 12: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 13: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, ofmonstrouswords, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, tinx_r, yantantether, ysilme (15 so far)

Day 14: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, used_songs, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 15: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejean, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 16: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 17: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 18: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 19: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvan_witch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 20: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (12 so far)

Day 21: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (11 so far)

Day 22: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, ysilme (13 so far)

Day 23: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme (10 so far)

Day 24: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether, ysilme (10 so far)

Day 25: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, shopfront, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, yantantether (12 so far)

Day 26: china_shop, sierranovembr

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. You can join in or drop out any time!

Comments

[ysilme]

Thanks for the book rec, that sounds interesting!
(What are radioactive brain weasels?)
I'm glad to hear writing was happening for you, even if perhaps not what you intended. But sorry for not feeling quite the thing. I hope this'll be improve soon! *hugs*
I'm forcing myself currently to go over an older drawer fic with edits as I promised to show it to a friend - forcing because I'm badly suffering from the horrible heat (yesterday was the hottest day in June since they started measuring, and sadly one of my mom's chickens died of a heat stroke. No wonder at 40°C. Fourty fucking degrees.) and am also preoccupied partly with reinstalling my desktop computer and migrating lots of data, and partly with possible serious data loss as one of my backup drives has been damaged. I haven't been as diligent as I should with making more than one backup of all of my files - due to my photography addiction and our collection of our music library as mp3s, and lots of recorded movies, there are a LOT of Gigabytes to store. I have a well-working backup system with my recent photos and other files, but the older ones aren't all stored in more than one backup place. Due to negligence on my part (not unplugging said backup drive before reinstalling the system) I got some software damage on it (Windows tried to install itself there without any reason nor giving any indication that it was about to), so the drive was no longer visible under windows, but we resolved that with the help of some Ubuntu tools. But when I was in the process of saving the data from the drive to another, due to negligence on Siljan's part the drive fell over when active and now there is also hardware damage. We haven't given up hope yet that the data might be salvageable, but it'll be expensive, I fear...
Anyway, despite all this I managed to keep up with my writing rather well, adding about 800 new words to my usual amount of editing on the 25th, and about 500 words of the newly-started editing project (yes, I'm now editing two at the same time) in addition to the editing.
I'm also quite happy that on the 14th, I reached 100k, which had been my first tentative word goal for the year, with 150k being a tentative second goal. I suppose I can now definitely aim for 200k, as I'm planning to do NaNo again as well.

[auroracloud]

*hugs* Thank you.

Brain weasels are, to quote Urban Dictionary, "Intrusive thoughts of self-doubt and despair, often associated with depression or anxiety, that crawl into your brain and make it hard to focus on other things."

Here's one example of someone talking a bit more about the concept: https://ideatrash.net/2015/11/identifying-common-brain-wease.html

ETA: I assume radioactive brain weasels are a worse form of the same. I look forward to finding the explanation. I suspect I occasionally have them.

Ugh, that heat sounds horrible! I would be liquid, I think. So sorry about your mum's chicken, too. :-( And sorry about the computer as well! Oh dear, that reminds me that I probably need to make sure I have my back-ups in order...

Well done for managing to keep up with your writing even so! And congratulations for hitting your goal before the midpoint of the year!