Or: Why the holidays were hard on me and why I shouldn't try to write two projects at once.
The holidays are stressful. We all know this. My last post before we took our holiday break was totally evidence of this. (Sorry about that, by the way. I tried, I really did. But it just wasn't happening.)
In less than a week, I made like 5 dozen cookies, wrapped way too many presents, ran a Storytime with nine kids between the age of fifteen months and nine years old, whom I then proceeded to wind up on sugar with candy canes and those cookies I mentioned earlier, packed for 2 days out of town, shopped on the 23rd (scary!), and probably a dozen things that I have already repressed. And I wasn't even that busy compared to some people!
But like an idiot, I let myself get stressed out about it. I don't know if you know this about your friendly neighborhood Saturday, but when I get really stressed, I barely sleep and when I do, I have stress nightmares (those are fun). So because of that, I was either too tired/stressed to write or I didn't have time.
Throw in trying to figure out how to balance two projects at completely different stages and you know what happens? I play too many facebook games (I love me some Frontierville), reread all my favourite Hyperbole and a Half posts (and there are a lot of favourite posts), empty my Google Reader and clean the spare room. And kitchen. And my room. (I also clean when I'm stressed or having writing issues.)
So here's what I've decided/figured out:
1. Not writing during the holidays when I'm stressed out of my mind is okay. It's going to happen and there's nothing I can do about it so I might as well accept it and not let it stress me out more, because that'll just backfire on my and make me want to write even less.
2. I'm not great at working at two projects at once. Especially not two projects at very different stages. So I'm letting Spyder wait while I finish writing this draft of Berserk. When I finish writing Berserk and I'm letting it rest before I start revising it, I'll revise Spyder more.
I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but that's my writing plan/goal. What are yours?
Peace and cookies,
Laina
