It’s been a wild week in the mountains. Filled with medical appointments, storms, head colds, and a broken dishwasher. Sometimes, life is messy, and the best you can do may not feel like quite enough. The instinct to fight against the tide leads to burnout and succumbing to the inevitable — but in a much grumpier frame of mind. None of us are immune; however, I’m learning to lean into the need for rest while my body battles the unexpected germs, adjusts to new medications, fights weather-related migraines, and, if I’m lucky, still finds a little time left to put pen to paper.

Novel90 ended on August 31st. The idea was to write less than 50k words, edit, and prep for submission or self-publication. Did I meet that exact goal? No. But, I didn’t expect that I would outline, draft, and edit a novel in 90 days. My plan was to get a new manuscript written, based on a very rough draft 0 I created during NaNo ’23. The journey has been fun as I reacquaint myself with these four characters and fall in love again with their story. It’s also exhausting to write a book full of emotional turmoil, especially one that hits on topics close to my heart. 

On days when I didn’t quite have the headspace to dive into some of those harder chapters, I edited instead. I’d plug a chapter into NaturalReader and listen as I looked for errors. Panic when the robotic voice pronounced a word wrong, making me think I’d misspelled something, and then laugh when I realized I hadn’t. Every step is forward progress, keeping me in tune with my story and pushing me closer to the finish line. To quote my Novel90 Coach, Kat Campbell said, perfection is the enemy of done.

The best part is I should have a few weeks between the finishing of this project and Novel90 Fall Edition starting. Since I’ve already outlined the project, I’m pretty excited to get started. In fact, I outlined two different novels so I can volley between them if needed. My goal won’t be to outline, draft, and edit for the fall edition. Instead, I intend to get at least one complete Draft 0 on paper. A wild, messy version of my story that I shake my head at when reading and wonder if I wrote it during an 11pm writing sprint, or the 5am one. I’ll work on polishing it in the new year.