Where did my motivation go?

So originally I had set a goal for myself to finish the first draft of my novel by the end of December, but things haven’t exactly gone the way I planned. While the end of NaNoWriMo was still just a daunting thing ahead of me I worried that I would lose my motivation to write when I no longer had the instant pressure of reaching 50 000 words in one month’s time.  And now the end is here and has already passed it’s turned out that my worries were justifiable, as it is exactly what has happened. In the 18 days which have passed since I reached the finish line, I have written less than 2500 words and I have not even opened the document in 8 days’ time. These aren’t great news, and I hate how I’ve ended up doing exactly what I worried about.

The weird thing is that once I actually think of my story I’m rather excited about it, yet I can’t find the motivation to do any actual work on it. I know it’s only been a bit over two weeks, but I know that if things continue like this I’m never going to finish telling this story, even though I so badly want to reach the point where I can finally add “The End”. And this is exactly how I’ve ended up with so many beginnings to stories, yet very few ends, if any at all. It’s the actual writing that stops me, despite the fact that I find the writing in itself rather enjoyable most of the time. Is there anyone else who’s got this problem? Have any of you got any tips on how to get yourself to actually finish the writing which you have started? How do I reach “The End” when motivation is nowhere to be found?

I haven’t given up on my story yet and I really hope that I will be able to finish it, but I fear that with my inner editor’s return came my motivation’s disappearance. The two of them can’t seem to coexist, and that appears to be what is interrupting my writing. But to finish this text on a positive note I should also mention that I’m determined to go on and do my best to finally finish one of my stories. I have also learned something from all of this: for next year’s NaNoWriMo I should really try to reach the end of the first draft by the end of the month. Actually having a finished first draft will make things a lot easier after the end of NaNoWriMo, and that’s even if this first draft isn’t complete. The most important thing is that it consists of a beginning, a middle and an end. This is because another thing which seems to stop me from writing is the fact that I’m somewhere about halfway through my story, with the end nowhere to be seen. It’s very discouraging being so far away from the end of such a long story.

Hopefully somewhen in November next year I’ll go back to this blog post to learn from my experience and take my own advice. But for now all I can do is keep on writing, because that’s the only way I can finish this and be able to say the magical words: “I have written a book”!

I was accepted to courses in concept art and creative writing!

So on the magical day 12/12/12 I got accepted to the two courses I had applied for – concept art and creative writing – and I have now decided to take them both! And this is even though the concept art one is full time and the creative writing one is half time, meaning 150% of studying while working as an au pair. The reason for this is that I just really wanted to take both the courses, and so that’s what I’ll do! If it turns out that it will be too much I can just drop out of one of them, but I really wanna do this so I’ll try my best to make it work!

I’m super excited for both of them, but especially the concept art one. I applied for it for this autumn, but I found the course like two days after the last date for applications, so I had to make a late application and therefore didn’t get in, which was quite disappointing. But this time I knew about it so could apply on time and therefore got in! 😀

TGIO, Geneva and Course de l’Escalade

So yesterday I was at a TGIO party in Geneva, to write until midnight (and the end of November) and then celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo, the fact that we managed to reach 50 000 words and thereby won, and that we can no go back to living a normal life which does not entail writing non stop! The TGIO was great and my final word count for NaNoWriMo ended up being 50 842 words. I broguht a friend of mine there, but she left around ten and after that it was just me and four French speaking people left haha. However they all knew English and I managed to survive, and even got to listen to quite a bit of French, which I actually understood a lot of. The four of us stayed overnight in the fifth person’s apartment, where we were. I only got about 5 hours of sleep, but it was great nonetheless! I also realized that this was actually my first night in Switzerland since I got here, considering even though I go to Switzerland pretty much every day, I really live in France, and thus has never stayed overnight in Switzerland until today.

I left them around around midday and set off into town. I spent the day walking around shops, buying chocolate (a must when you’re in Switzerland!) and watching course de l’Escalade, which is a running contest that goes through the old town in Geneva. I think this must have been the coldest day so far and it felt as if I almost froze to death while watching the contest haha. But now I’m all motivated to run! I love taking part in, and watching running competitions. It’s so much fun and always gets me really motivated! At least I was out running both yesterday and Saturday last week, so I’m on my way to start running regularly again!

All in all it was a good day in Switzerland!

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1. The compulsory TGIO cake (which I ironically enough didn’t try…)

2. Course de l’Escalade

3. I can’t be the only one who’s amused by this?

4. I just love the way this book has been made to look old. It’s lovely!

I WON NANOWRIMO

So about an hour ago I WON NANOWRIMO for the first time!!!!!And not only did I win, but I even won it a day early, as it’s only the 29th today! And if you take a look at the bottom of the menu you’ll see proof of my victory!

This just feels so good, and I can’t believe I actually managed to write 50 000 words in a months time. I mean that is sick! I’t just incredible! And I’m so happy I made it and won! And the fun isn’t even over yet, because tomorrow I’m going to a TGIO (Thank Gosh It’s Over) Party, which I’m sure is gonna be great!

However my novel isn’t actually finished yet. I’m not even near the end of it. But today and tomorrow that doesn’t matter. These days are for celebrating the fact that I actually managed to reach 50 000 words in such a short period of time. But when December comes I am going to try to actually finish this first draft of my novel. But no matter what happens after NaNoWriMo I’ve already written a lot more than what I would’ve had I not participated, and that’s all thanks to NaNo.

I shall write a bit more about my novel and NaNoWriMo once I’m not quite as excited as I am at the moment, haha!

NaNoWriMo

During the last month, starting on November 1st, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). And for those of you who aren’t familiar with this, it is a challenge where people who want to write sign up to write a 50 000 word novel during the month of November. The novel in itself does not have to be finished by the end of the month as long as you have reached the 50 000 word mark.

So this is what I have been busy with for the last month. I signed up the previous year as well, however I only managed to write a bit less than 7000 words. But this year I am happy to announce that today, the 29th of November, my word count is at 48 363!!!!!!

And if you take a closer look at the picture down here, which shows my stats from the NaNoWriMo website, you can see that it says “At This Rate You Will Finish On: November 29, 2012” and it so happens to be November 29 TODAY!!!!!!!!!!! And this all means that I will definitely win NaNo this year! And I am so excited for this. I mean my novel isn’t even near being finished, so I’ll have to continue writing after November, BUT I will pass the 50 k mark!

And as much as I could go on writing about the wonderfulness of NaNoWriMo, I better go back to writing now so that I actually will finish on time, preferably even today. But you can all expect another post soon where I desribe it a bit more and why it is a great thing to do! And until then happy writing all people out there who are doing NaNoWriMo – You Can Do This!!