Dealing With Loss

It is 3:55am...and I am currently going through the five stages of grief. I am mostly see-sawing between anger and bartering. I've had a bit of them all with the exception of acceptance; I'm expecting that will happen sometime tomorrow (if I hit 18,000 words).

Disclaimer: My deepest apologies to anyone who is dealing with the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or even a beloved goldfish. In the light of your loss mine is much smaller. I do not mean to belittle or mock your sadness. Here is my story:

I am in the middle of week two of NaNoWriMo and all that that means. Week two is the hardest week to write. The energy and exuberance of starting has worn off, so has the caffeine buzz, and the surge high. Week two is when everything crashes. You hate your plot, the main character, and everything you’ve written. All you want to do is delete everything or quit. It is a challenge to push through, ignore the inner-editor, and keep writing. This week had historically also been tough for me because I am recovering from Boos-ounter. Since the weekend I’ve been behind in word count. Today the gap between what I had written and what I should have had grown to more than 6,000 words. Today’s plan was to catch up and I was doing good and I was saving throughout the day.

Tonight I am at the church with Inn From the Cold. I thought it would be a great chance to write. I had good word growth. While I was have a short break (celebrating reaching a word mile stone) my computer randomly decided to update itself. It shut down and all progress I made today is lost. I’ve looked for the auto-saves and backed up files...gone. I was hoping that when I reopened word it would have a “this file was recovered”...nope. All brilliance (and crap) written today is lost to the digital void. 2,000+ words gone. I am in shock...I am angry...I have tried to reason with the computer...I have threatened to throw it out the window...sadly I haven’t found my words. They are just GONE!

Please do not let yourself become a victim. If you are a wrimo, if you are working on a paper or writing a sermon...save your document. Now!



Word Count: was at 13,605 now at 11,563 (look at the word drop)

P.S. In this moment, right now, this is the closest I have ever come to "throwning in the towel" and just stopping. Why bother?

Comments

Unknown said…
Don't give up. I am only just over 9,000 words just because you lost some doesn't mean it is the end of Nano. be mad, i surtianly would be. but don't give you you can still do it!!!!
Robin said…
Ouch. Not fun. But I bet if you just pick it back up and start writing it'll come back to you, and better this time, too.
Elizabeth said…
Feeling a bit better. I wrote about 300 words by hand last night. It helped.