My Post-NaNoWriMo Slump: Beating the Book Baby Blues

Is this thing on? *taps mic*

Hello. I’m back.

Where do I even begin?

Well, for one thing, NaNoWriMo is over. I feel like I should be celebrating, but I’m not. I’m too busy feeling miserable. Weird, right? Well, maybe not. After all, I didn’t officially participate (at least, not according to the NaNoWriMo website). However, I still set daily word count goals, documented my progress in a spreadsheet titled “Izzy’s Story Word Count Tracker (Jess’s unofficial NaNoWriMo attempt #3)”, and felt a pang of disappointment when I didn’t hit 50K. That being said, I still finished my book, and even exceeded my overall word count goal of 80,000. I should be ecstatic—and I was… for about five minutes.

Then, the feeling faded. Within moments of typing ‘The End’, grabbing a screenshot of my word count, and backing up my files, I began to feel an all too familiar emptiness in the pit of my stomach. After months of sailing on a sea of doubt and coffee, I was quickly approaching dry land. I call it The Island of What Now.

My word count screenshot. I do this with every first draft.

The Island of What Now is deceptively beautiful; its verdant splendour is a welcome sight for sore eyes. Exhausted from your journey, you eagerly race toward it, beckoned by the promise of sleep and the love and support of your family and friends. The end is near; you can even taste the salt in the air (just kidding, those are your tears). You’ve traveled day and night to get here, conquered an ocean of words, and maybe even fended off a few pirates along the way. This is it: the moment you’ve been waiting (and working) for. Maybe you’ll even retire here, swinging from the trees on a hammock of pure creative bliss. Content at last.

Alas, The Island of What Now is not what it seems. The forest is deep, dark, and hides all kinds of hideous monsters, like depression and anxiety. Before long, you realize you aren’t alone. Voices of unknown origin find their way into your ears. They tell you that this is just the beginning, that the worst is yet to come. At first, you ignore the voices. They get louder and louder, often contradicting themselves. One tells you you’ll never get off this island. Another urges you to leave immediately. You debate returning to your ship, which has been your home for weeks, months, or even years. As you drift off into a restless sleep, you begin to wonder if the voices are right: maybe you should’ve stayed home.

I’ve been writing books since I was thirteen years old. The Island of What Now is like a second home to me, a place that often seems unavoidable despite its relatively small size. It is both the rock and the hard place I keep getting stuck between. Part of me wants to go back to the ocean—that is, start a new story just so I won’t have to listen to the voices telling me that my current one has run aground. Another part of me likes being shipwrecked, because it means I no longer have to contend with the near-constant fear that I will never reach my destination.

The story I chose for NaNoWriMo was not a new idea. I’ve been carrying these characters around in my head since January of 2015. Every time I let them out to play, they came home with new bruises, no doubt caused by the blunt ends of my half-finished ideas. While I did manage to complete a full draft a couple of years ago, deep down, I knew it was terrible, and not in the way first drafts usually are. This writing was angry, because I was angry. Angry that I was a writer stranded on an island of self-doubt. Angry that I had put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. Angry at other things in my life that had nothing to do with the characters or their story. After numerous false starts, I finally settled on one that I liked and churned out 93,000 words. They were awful, but they were there. I knew I could never publish this story (though I did post it, briefly, on my blog), but I didn’t care. The important thing is I. Finished. It.

Then, a few months ago, I decided that I would once again try and tell these characters’ story. I made two attempts. The first one I quit at 20,000 words when I realized I was info-dumping. The second one is sitting in a folder on my desktop alongside all my other books—some published, others soon-to-be. As much as I want to feel proud of myself for sticking to my outline (which I will talk about in another post), more than anything, I just feel empty. Directionless. Adrift. At one point, I even felt like I was drowning.

You’ve probably heard of the “writer’s high”. Well, this was a “writer’s low”, and I hit rock bottom. I told myself that I needed a break, but the voices on The Island of What Now had a very different opinion about how I should spend my time. “Plan your next book,” they said. “Real writers don’t take vacations,” was equally popular.

Needless to say, I didn’t listen to them. Instead, I decided to focus on everything I’ve achieved this year, as if I owed the imaginary naysayers some kind of explanation. In 2018, I finished the edits for Roads Untraveled, wrote the second and third drafts of The Watching Game, released the second edition of The Spirit Catchers, updated my website, and unofficially participated in NaNoWriMo. I’ve done enough. More than enough, actually. I can afford to lie in the sand for a little while and listen to the waves.