In memory of failures new and old

It has been two full months since my last update to this blog. When this blog was started I had already conceded to not finishing the book by the end of November. However the intention of posting it wasn't just to parade my failures in a grand display of failure. I had intended to become encourage through sharing to write more, and indeed I had written more but I am nowhere near a satisfying end. I thought about this while looking at my sparsly updated blog and word document and wondered what stymied my progress in November and since.

What many of the successful NaNoers did was to do as the project required literally. They wrote 50,000 words of a novel. The difference between them and me is that I attempted to write 50,000 words of a novel in sequence whereas some of the successful writers merely wrote several different parts and later assembled the missing pieces. Also I think I over thought the project and should have just wrote with a goal of X words a day and not worry about why it makes sense.

Either way that was why I didn't finish in November, it doesn't explain why I haven't started writing more since then. Why I haven't written more is broken down into three groups

1.) Self doubt
 I go through periods of depression and can't dare do anything productive. During this time I will order myself a large waahburger and french cries. Also if the depression is bad enough I will order a very real burger and fries. This group actually segues nicely into group too

Pictured above: self doubt. Glasses don't help ideas flow

2.) Laziness 

No buts about this I can be a lazy fool. I have gotten better but the fact is the mighty electronic machine that I write my stories also has everything I would want in my lifetime. If I downloaded things illegally it would have enough for several lifetimes. So when I sit down to write on the computer it competes with youtube something awful and a litany of other things that capture my short attention span. Even as I write this I tabbed away several times to look at kickstarter projects. 

It's what Billy Shakes would have wanted people!

Thankfully it's not all depression and steampunk Shakespeare. I do have more reasonable...reasons for not  writing.

3.) Important or seemingly important distractions
It may be hard to believe but I am an adult.

Cigar+Mustache+Polo=Adult

As an adult I often have to deal with adult concerns and put projects on the backside. So if things are hectic at work or if essays are due at school I may not even think about writing for weeks. If family comes in they will get first priority over projects, though depression and internet may push them to second.

Now those are the obvious ones. The seemingly important distractions are where things get hairy.

I have the tendency to take on several things at once. So around the same time I started NaNoWriMo I got the idea to do a movie project in 2012 where I make a new short film every month and upload the results to youtube. In my head I can justify it by saying that I am not writing because I'm making movies. Though in reality most of my films are made at the end of the month. Though I will save that for a later entry. And later entries is what I am getting at with this post.

I may never finish my novel, but hopefully I will. Regardless of this I want to keep this blog active and if it's not with novel dumps then it will be with more bloggy things. Long form posts that are too lengthy for  my Facebook Twitter or Tumblr (yes I have all three) will go here.

Though here is my promise. If I go a month without an update I will go into my vault of failures and expose the embarrassing past for all to see. Breaking down my issues with writing have been therapeutic and if I have to do that with my other projects I will.

Heres to a future of happier posts.