June 2021 Writing Update

June is over, and boy, did it feel long. Between working on my academic project and writing here and there for Marie/Elise, my murder mystery novel, I feel like I did so much in a relatively short amount of time. It's no wonder that I hit a bit of a wall in the past week, feeling that burnout so strongly that I had to take some time off from my phone and computer. 

This June, I had a writing goal that was spurred on by the fact that I'd written about 11,000 words for Marie/Elise back in May, and I'd basically decided that I was on such a roll that I wanted to see if I could make a reasonable goal for myself for the month of June while working on my academic project, which I knew would take up most of my time. I'd also completely revamped the plot, and I was so excited that the motivation for that really spurred me to continue writing and making time for that every night.

Adding about 20,000 words in the course of the month seemed feasible, so that's what I started with. I decided that I was going to try to reach 31,000 words total in my manuscript. I did the calculations, and that was roughly 670 words per day. It didn't feel like a lot, but then, you never know what'll happen and where life will take you. So I didn't want to get my hopes up. If I could at least get close to my goal, I'd be happy.

I split up the month into three parts of ten days each, with their own word count goal, to make it easier to keep track of things:

Part 1: +6,667 words

Part 2: +6,667 words

Part 3: +6,666 words

I started off pretty strong, writing over 13,000 words in Part 1 of the month, which was more than twice as much as my goal. It felt awesome! From there, I ended Part 2 with a total of 31,745 words, and ended Part 3 with 38,025 words. 

 

So, to recap: My goal for June 2021 was to reach 31,000 words. I ended up with 38,025 words! 🥳

It really helped that I was pacing myself all month. I made sure that I didn't become completely obsessed with my academic project, and I made sure that I put in a handful of hours into it per day and stopped at a certain time every afternoon. This gave me enough time to relax and made it easier for me to take the time in the evening to write for Marie/Elise. 

Things slowed down towards the end of the month, though, which I feel was to be expected. Health problems started kicking in, I was starting to feel the burnout of working on my academic project every day, and I was also feeling a bit low on motivation for writing the book itself. 

Now that we're officially in July 2021, I'm hoping to get back on track, but I'm thinking of giving myself some time to get myself centered again before pushing more energy out again. The older I get, the more I realize that balance is super important, and while it is a give-and-take (we only have so many hours in a day), it's for the best to make those decisions and make those sacrifices. In the long run, I'll still hopefully get everything I want to do done. But for now, I do need to focus on myself some more, especially my health. 

I also worked on a few podcast episodes this month, one of which is still being edited and one that needs to be recorded. I'd hoped to have them up earlier, but like I said: burnout. I'll try to get those out in July, though I make no promises. July is going to be a tough month for me. Between taking care of my health (which will most definitely distract me from my work in the coming weeks) and finalizing my academic project, I don't know if I'll have enough time to write, let alone record, edit, and upload podcast episodes. 

But I'll try!