reluctantly slowing down

I've been pretty diligent with my daily goal of 3000 words. However, the extra sitting and typing isn't doing my neck and shoulder much good. Neither is long stretches of cello practice. In fact, all that is making it worse.

The neck and shoulder pain has been bothering me off and on since the last week of October. It led to an adventure on Wednesday evening. When I was driving home from work, the ache started radiating up to my ear and was making my right arm feel a bit tingly. I had considered getting a doctor's appointment, but the soonest mine can see me is the 28th. Then I considered going to urgent care to see if I could get some pain meds to tide me over until I could see my doctor, but I wasn't sure if this qualified as "urgent." I called the 24/7 nurseline number on my insurance card, and I told the nurse that I'd had this pain off and on for three weeks. I asked if it would be appropriate to go to urgent care.

She said I should call 911 because those symptoms could be heart attack.

This is not a good thing to tell someone with a history of panic attacks. Most of me didn't think I was having a heart attack, but a teeny bit of me started to worry about it because of the family history of heart problems. It was really hard not to listen to that teeny bit, especially when the nurse was so insistent that I call 911.

I realize it's a CYA mentality for the nurse and the insurance company to assume the worst so as not to appear negligent. On the other hand, the nurse discounted much of what I told her, and took the neck pain radiating to ear and arm out of context as the only important things to consider.

So panicky me calls 911, the EMTs show up, I tell them what's going on, they take my vitals, and they tell me they don't think I'm having a heart attack. However, they said if I wanted to go to the ER, they'd be glad to take me. At which point I said I would go, because the only thing that was going to stop me panicking was a doctor telling me that I'm not having a heart attack. They understood, and were as nice as could be about the whole thing. I appreciated that.

I was in the ER for four hours, grappling with waves of panic on top of the neck and shoulder pain. I finally saw a nurse practitioner. She felt around my neck and shoulders, and when she pressed on a particular spot, I could feel the tingling in my right arm. She decided on X-rays, which turned up negative for anything overt that she was looking for, like a bone spur, so she diagnosed it as a pinched nerve, not a heart attack, and recommended that I see an orthopedist. She also gave me a prescription for Flexeril. I've only taken it at night, and while it helps me sleep, I go through most of the next day feeling groggy and drugged. Don't like that.

I saw an orthopedist on Friday, and I've been prescribed four weeks of physical therapy. The pain is now moving around a bit. On Thursday, it felt like it was pulling down on the inside of my ears. Yesterday, it had moved to the back of my neck and radiating up to the crown of my head. Sometimes, I feel it down further in my right shoulder blade. It's less sharp than it has been, but it's still there. And it's affecting how much time I can spend sitting at a desk comfortably writing.

I've reached 50,000 words on this writing project, so I've met the official NaNoWriMo goal, but I have to slow down the writing pace because of the neck and shoulder pain. This means I won't reach 90,000 words by the end of the month.

I'm very disappointed. I can work on it into December, of course, but I had really latched on to the idea of getting the entire first draft done in a month. It's taken the wind out of my sails to keep working on it at all. In fact, the only reason I have any desire to continue with it is because there's some good stuff that's come out onto the page, and I want to see what happens. It also feels like the story is going to be longer than I'd anticipated. This isn't a bad thing, and who knows what will happen in the editing phase when I start ruthlessly chopping stuff out?

I will still keep posting my daily word counts on Twitter until I finish this draft, and thank you so much to everyone who has popped in to ask how the writing's going and to find out the latest word count. I appreciate it muchly.

a third done

I'm closing in on 39,000 words written. Toward the end of next week, I will hopefully have reached the NaNoWriMo official goal of 50,000 words. However, I've still got a ways to go to get to my personal goal of 90,000 words by the end of the month.

Week 2 was a slog, as predicted. Right-side neck and shoulder pain plagued me all week, which made it painful to type for long periods of time, let alone do much cello practice with the bow. I managed some word sprints with breaks in between, which seemed to help. I had some acupuncture last week, which also helped, and I'm getting a massage tomorrow. I've been using heating pads and ice packs and all that, too.

In addition, week 2 writing resulted in things starting to make themselves plain to me the more I wrote.

Thing 1: my main and impact characters are switching places. This is not a calamity, merely unexpected. And interesting. And worth pursuing. Writing is like that.

Thing 2: At least two characters, possibly three, will need to be re-named, since two sets of characters each have names that begin with the same letter, and sometimes I'm mixing them up. What was I thinking doing that, especially when these sets of characters are often in scenes together? And I need to come up with names for two other minor characters that showed up - I can't keep referring to them as "so-and-so's relative" - it's getting annoying having to type that over and over again. I do a lot of research to come up with character names, and yet I also tend to change them despite the research. As you do.

Thing 3: Two major scenes at the beginning will be switched. Because it will flow better that way. That is all the reasoning I have for the switch.

I still like the story. I like how it's progressing. I'm nearing a plot point where things seem to be going well, but they soon won't, and conflict is always so much more interesting to write anyway. I'm focusing much more on action and dialogue than on description, but I can add more atmosphere when I revise.

Back to it.

fast drafting

At the end of week one of this new story project, I have 15,103 words written. I will add another 3000 words today. So far so good. Next week will be the test - week two is when the "ooh, shiny!" of working on a new story wears off all of sudden, and I'm left with slogging through. Having experienced a similar phenomenon with cello practice, I'm not too worried about it. Yet.

I've managed the increased word count this week by adding a second writing session. I normally get out about 1500 words in the morning, first thing. I considered attempting all 3000 words in the morning, but that would mean getting up even earlier, and with winter coming on, my hibernation instinct is already in full swing, so an earlier rising ain't happenin'. Instead, I do the other 1500 words in an evening writing session after my cello practice. It's worked well so far, seeing as cello puts me into a structural-considering mood, which I can then carry over into writing a scene. It's all working in layers and bits at a time, I tell you. Cello, writing, knitting, life. 's only way I get anything done.

I do have to push myself to do that second writing session though. I'm much less energetic in the evening and not feeling as creative after a day at work, so it takes longer to do that second set of 1500 words. Still, that was the idea of this experiment - to make it more of a challenge. And it is.

I've also had intermittent, right-side neck and shoulder pain this week. That's made not only typing a challenge, but cello practice as well. I've been doing short bursts of typing and practice so as not to further strain the muscle but still be able to get something done in each endeavor.

My outline for this novel is more detailed than usual. With about 60-ish scenes to write, I can write two a day, one in each 1500-word session, and that will get me to 90,000 words and hopefully all scenes written by November 30.

If this higher daily word count approach works, I may adopt it for future projects, whether I'm participating in NaNoWriMo or not. I like being able to get a complete first draft done so quickly. I find that the longer it takes me to do the first draft, the less steam I have for revision and publishing, which ends up causing a backlog of manuscripts that have been drafted, but not polished.

Speaking of which, I've gotten a few questions about The King Tree, which I had intended to publish at the end of the summer. The manuscript is done and formatted. It's the cover that's holding things up. I lucked out big with Tempus House. I found an image I liked, after much searching, and was able to get copyright permission in only a few days. I naively assumed the same would happen with King Tree. But alas, no. Once I had the cover concept perfected, I stupidly set my heart on it. Without copyright permission for the main image, however, I can't publish it. I'm trying to avoid a complete re-do of the cover, but that may be my only option. In a way, I'm not surprised. I had to change the title for Tempus House from the one I'd wanted, so to have to change the cover for King Tree appears to be establishing a tradition. That I don't like. At all.

I've been considering writing goals for next year, and I've decided they will actually be revision and publishing goals instead. That backlog I mentioned? That's what I'm going to tackle next year. It's like having too big a yarn stash languishing in a closet. Makes me twitchy not to have it serving a more useful purpose.