I really miss being able to go into my writing zone for lengthy bouts of fiction writing and I really miss doing both Inktober for the art and NaNoWriMo, however, this year I won’t have done either.
I can’t do it, there is just too much stress and chaos around the house lately, I am not allowed more than twenty minutes in my zone before someone wants to either disturb me or start a new screaming match again.
The only time I have is late at night when everybody is in bed, but that means strange sleeping habits for me – for example, I am writing this blog post at 5:28am on the 28th October 2022. I had five hours sleep last night and I had only managed to eat 800 calories all day.
It’s nearly 6am; I guess a new day has started?
It torments me when I can’t add to my current projects.
At the moment I am too tired to think about doing it, I haven’t slept in twenty hours and I am doing all of this without caffeine, remember, I went cold turkey and I only had three slip ups this month!
I really want my AD project and the Christmas and Easter project to get done as well as my steampunk lesbian adventure story.
You know I was too embarrassed to share this at the time, but I had to turn down winning a prize for a writer’s retreat a friend nominated me for, because I couldn’t afford the transport money to get there? But imagine if I had been able to afford it, a whole month in solitude writing at my heart’s content, no interruptions.
You realise I could easily write 12k a day again, don’t you? Most probably only 4k on average because the scenery was beautiful and I am a natures child by heart!
I rarely watch TV because of the noise too and my average of 150 books a year has gone down to 70 if I am lucky, all because of noise pollution from my other household members and invasion of personal space.
When Henry was a toddler, he was much quieter, seriously, he was very quiet and undemanding – he is twelve, surely things should be easier now?
Surely he’d want to shut himself away in his bedroom doing his own thing? No, that’s not him he wants and needs constant attention, its tiring.
I have lived with cousins who had three kids under the age of seven playing around me, not necessarily quiet, regular kid noise and I still could write – but it’s different here, because it’s not normal noise and it’s not just kids shouting.
I hate the idea of not getting my work done, because whilst it’s not getting done it means I am staying less than mediocre, I am unable to pull myself out of this poverty or bettering myself in any way. I can’t practise art anymore, I can’t do puzzles, I can’t do anything, just sit there and exist and be drained and to listen to vitriolic crap being fired between Paul and Henry.
I try to take myself upstairs out of it all, because if I open my mouth it makes it all worse; no matter how much of a Pollyanna I try to be, that doesn’t work here!
But then I still hear them shouting at each other, but it’s muffled so I don’t know what’s going on then I hear screams and doors slamming, then silence. Then it starts again around twenty minutes later.
I have outlined my story plans so well because I can’t get into the zone to write the story, that once I have the peace around me to write, I am writing very quickly and I am not needing to edit as much as I used to.
Because I have to re-read my notes a lot, because I lose track of what I just read because of a sudden scream or bang.
I am beginning not to need to refer to hand notes anymore.
I know through experience that with this kind of depth that I have of my story plans, that I could write the AD project within three weeks to completion. But it will require three hours a day to do it. I write at a pace of 3k per hour on an average day when I am undisturbed.
Problem is, I need my music on and I need to be left alone without any interruption so I can go into the zone a trance-like state and do my work. Without that, my writing is trash and bland.
Henry hates certain types of music I love for writing, he is using this as a supposed “Trigger” to his bad behaviour and he laps up the “trigger” remark to the fullest capacity that he can.
When he realises I am writing and I have ear phones on, he does everything in his power to come upstairs a lot and open my door constantly, making me have to take the ear phones off to hear him, because I am deaf without my hearing aids and I can’t use hearing aids with ear phones on.
Then, when it’s not him coming upstairs every five minutes, it’s his father, the amount of times they need to use the bathroom is stupid, funnily enough when I don’t write, they can go an hour between pees, when I am writing its every fifteen minutes. But they don’t just go to the bathroom and leave, oh no, they want to give me a running commentary on the news or backstabbing each other to me.
I can write my blog posts, because it flows differently to a story. I can lose my way a little here, but in a story I need to be consistent and shift perspectives a lot of the time.
I’m exhausted, I just want to write.
Thanks for reading.