December Postmortem

I set myself some difficult goals for December (difficult for me, at least, being the super introvert that I am). Let’s see how that all went down, shall we?

How’d I Do?

Not great, at a summary, but let’s break it down, shall we.

1.) Banjo. I haven’t done as well with my banjo as I’d like, which is frustrating, because it’s an instrument I really want to play. I love the sound of it. I enjoy playing it when I do play it, but I think maybe I’m having trouble with the songs I’m using to try to learn it. They don’t mean anything to me. I don’t have any connection to them. They’re great fiddle tunes. They’re fun to play once you get the hang of them, but they hold no meaning to me and I’m the kind of person who has a great deal of difficulty engaging with things that hold no personal meaning. This is the same reason why I suck at small talk, why I can spend an entire weak discussing the ins and outs of writing (something I’m obsessively passionate about), the reason why I discuss deeply intimate things like mental health on this blog. But I’m not going to give up.

2.) Writing. Goal achieved. The New Project is ostensibly finished. And by that I mean, I’ve committed the plot to paper. There’s a long way to go before I’ll be comfortable having anybody read it, but I have a complete first draft. So there. My mess is made, now I have to go clean it up.

3.) Querying. I ended up taking a break from this. Mostly because most agents are closed to querying over the holidays, but my mostly because I was so solidly on writer setting that business writer was quarantined in the far corner of my brain. Also, this month I totally forgot how to write to-do lists and got stuck in totally not productive hyperfocus spirals. So yeah. This stuff didn’t get done.

4.) Socializing. I did it. I went and played board games with my Person’s friends three times!!! I peopled, people! I’m a peopler. Yay!!!!

5.) Have Fun. Hmm. Reading the list of things I was trying to avoid doing under this item is like reading EXACTLY WHAT I DID LAST WEEK. Honestly, it’s hard to have fun when in the back of my mind I’m thinking about the fact that I’m happy to be flying home next week because puppies and family and friends, but sad to be flying home next week because my Person isn’t coming with me and I’m starting to get pre-emptively depressed, which doesn’t help me have fun. All that said, while my person was off for the holidays, we did have fun. We went on walks, we went for a picnic, we went to the movies, we played games, joked, had fun. We laughed a lot and who isn’t having fun while they’re laughing, huh?

What Now?

1.) Banjo. I’m going to sit down and write out a strategy, complete with goals, on how to learn this instrument in a way that is meaningful to me. I’ve never found much success in going about things in conventional ways and I’m not sure why I thought that wouldn’t hold true in this case. The only way I’m any good at bass is because I did everything totally out of order. I started learning a month before my first performance. I didn’t get myself a teacher until four months after I started playing and I only had lessons sporadically. I learned bass by playing with people, by listening to and watching other bassists play, by figuring out what did and didn’t work. I didn’t even learn to read bass clef until I’d been playing the instrument for four years, so why on earth did I think learning banjo from a book was going to work for me?

2.) Writing. My goal is to finish transcribing my handwritten draft and once that’s done, start the process of filling in the blanks. These are notes I’ve left myself in brackets for the thinks I need to world build, research, add details to, backseed, edit. I’m not going to let myself actually revise this draft until my alpha readers have had a chance to give me feedback, I’m only allowed to revise things I’ve specified in my brackets. This is going to be an exercise in self-control, but I’ve found that the writing process that works best for me is speeding through each draft with one specific thing to focus on. This last draft was committing the plot to page. Now I’ll fill in brackets. Next, I’ll respond to Alpha Readers feedback in a series of quick layers drafts that will focus separately on voice/character, plot, pacing, and mechanics. Then I’ll send out a call for beta readers and revise again in the same tiered manner.

3.) Go home. Collapse. Get puppy love. Apply for my next visa. Layout plans for the rest of the year in small, achievable chunks. Give myself the time to feel the emotions I’ll need to feel. These emotions will be conflicting and complex and I’ll need to accept and process these in a manner that is kind to myself and to the people around me.

 

Thanks for reading, as always.