12 Books in 12 Months

On Friday at work I had a bit of an epiphany.  Then I had a lot of stuff to do over the weekend, mainly in terms of housekeeping and ensuring my sister celebrated her birthday, so I didn’t blog about it.  Slack, I realise, but don’t fret – I’m here now.

Y’see, last week was kind of a slog.  I was really struggling to concentrate on writing, which I had been putting down to feeling a bit under the weather – but the usual pre-emptive strike of necking Lemsip and being in bed by 11 wasn’t helping.  Those tactics made me feel physically better, but I was still listless and more inclined to sit refreshing Friendface than I was to work on anything.

Then I started to think about all the things I am trying to get done at the moment, and realised that volume of tasks is the issue once again.  You’d think I would have learned from my mistakes with 12 books, but no.

At the moment I am supposed to be working on:

• Book Thirteen (the book about 12 books in 12 months) for NaNoWriMo.
• A draft of a kids book I’ve been working on for a couple of months and had meant to have done by the end of September.
• Promoting – and soon editing and publishing – an eBook of short stories as a fundraiser for Homespun Theatre.
• Finishing my own contribution to said eBook.
• Penning a guest post for the Fight Fight Fight blog.
• Writing two job applications.

And finishing a blanket I knitted about two years ago, but that seems a little frivolous for this list.  Even so, that’s quite a lot to be going on with, especially in conjunction with the fact I am still temping full time.

I haven’t not been doing these tasks – they are all in varying stages of completion.  What I have been doing is giving half an hour here and there to each of them, but spending much longer swathes of time reading comments on blog posts or staring off into space and coughing occasionally.  Clearly I should just come up with a systematic approach, prioritising and dealing with these items in order of importance as I have done many times before, but last week I chose to succumb to mild brain death instead.

This may be because I haven’t had any time off since returning from the backpacking adventure at the end of May (I know lots of people work full time 5 months straight without a break, but the fact there’s no clear end in sight and I have all the other stuff to do on top feels a little bit much. Yes, this is a first world problem. So sue me.).  Still, having worked out what the issue is, I guess I can now address it.

I am posting about this on the grounds I can’t be the only one feeling a bit Overwhelmed By Stuff – especially during National Novel Writing Month.  So, if you too are struggling to find the time to write at the moment, here is my suggestion: make a list of everything else you’ve got on, take a breath, and stop beating yourself up.

Then you should probably get on with it.