November Silence / December Noise

I know, I know—things have been quiet here as of late. I didn’t write a November post and there are two big reasons for that.

One, I took part in the carpal-tunnel-fest known as NaNoWriMo. Thus, all writing time was devoted to NaNo-ing instead of blogging and, though I didn’t win, I made significant progress on a project and churned out three times the word count I typically do in a month. So yay.

Two, like a lot of Americans, I was reeling from the results of the 2016 presidential election. Because of where I work, I can’t make political comments in public, and that includes via social media and on this blog. Those who know me personally know where I stand and, last month, it just wouldn’t have been possible for me to follow that rule if I’d written a post.

There’s kind of a third reason that’s a combo of one and two. The project I worked on during NaNo happens to be a dark-ish near-future political satire that got significantly darker and much less satrical in light of the election. Working on it provoked all my anxieties, and yet, it was all I wanted to do because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say elsewhere. I spent so much time thinking about my book that I struggled to focus on anything other than writing. For the first time ever, I felt like writing was starting to affect my mental health. So I took a breather here and there. Some days, I watched TV instead of writing and played silly games with my toddler.

But I didn’t give up on my book and I don’t plan to. As a person who benefits from hetero-white-lady privilege, now is most definitely not the time to take the easy way out. Now is not the time to go quiet. Things need to be said and, with any luck, I’ll have a first draft of my book complete by the end of the year.

On that same note, I’m steeling myself for uncomfortable but totally necessary conversations with relatives that are inevitably going to play out over the holidays. If anyone has survived one of these, tips would be appreciated.

How’s everyone else in writer-land holding up?