You’re on the last leg of the challenge. You’re feeling the pressure. You’re doing your best to cram as many words as you can into your project so you don’t feel like a complete loser, right?

And this post is encouraging…how?

Well, let me assure you that you aren’t alone.

Writing over the holidays can be hugely depressing. So much is going on…parties, shopping, cooking, cleaning the house for guest visits…it totally eats into your writing time. Not only that, but holiday stress and winter bugs take a toll on your health. So even with the extra time built into this holiday-timed challenge, your word count could have suffered.

Trust me. You are not alone.

I came to a grinding halt on my Sven project a few weeks ago, so I bounced from working on other projects to working on out-of-order scenes in the Sven project. Then the holidays flitted into my life like snowflakes floating an elf’s sneeze (OMG, do you see how much the holidays messed with my writing?) and all was lost.

So yes, I’m cramming. Writing like the wind (elf’s sneeze.) I didn’t always make my daily or weekly goals, and I may not make my Sven goal, but you know what? In the long run I’m not going to remember that I wrote 950 words instead of 1,000 on December 24th. I’m going to remember what it felt like to sit in front of the Christmas tree and play a board game with my husband and son. I’m going to remember the look on my son’s face when he opened his Christmas Eve present. I’m going to remember how we finally got the stray neighborhood cat to come in out of the cold and eat a warm meal.

So you didn’t make your holiday goal. So you didn’t make your Sven goal. You made an effort. And you still have time. Make a push this week, but don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t do.

And remember, you are not alone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Larissa Ione. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.