November Wrapup 2020

December 08, 2020

Ah, November. November was honestly a mixed bag, which I'll explain more below, but it ranged all over the place from good really bad to really good again.

For the most part my month was taken up by manically participating in NaNoWriMo, but there were some other things I did as well. ;)

This is where the real tea is. As you may know, writing was insane for almost the whole month of October, the last week especially, and I went straight into NaNoWriMo with almost no chill under my belt at all. And as the month progressed and I got more and more desperate to take a break come the beginning of December(despite my word count slowly proving that I would be still working on the novel well into December), the more overwhelmed I got. And writing more words every day with steadily lengthening work shifts was only making it worse.

Eventually, I reached a point toward mid-November where both my parents told me it was time to relax about it a little bit and stop focusing on finishing the novel. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50k, not finish the book, and what would be would be.

Once I got my stress fest out and could change my mindset, writing got a lot easier. Mindset is everything, people! Context matters.

In the end, I did finish NaNoWriMo with no problem, I reached 50k about a week early, and I finished the full novel at a whopping 77k on December 5th. The poor novel is going to need a lot of editing and rewrites that I'm not looking forward to, but I'm proud to have finished it. <3

I really have no idea how I did it, but I did do quite a bit of art in November! Believe it or not, most of it was RCOBI/WSOD related, but I love 'em all.

I doodled these at my job while I was on Greeter/People Counter duty, and WHOA BRUH LOOKIT THAT HANSOME BOI ON THE LEFT

Drew a new Wick and Archer comic, which you can also see in this Instagram post

I drew some concept art for the seraph houses for my novel, since I realized too late that I didn't really know how to picture them. I'm so proud of this page. It looks so pretty. <3

And also an explosion and an eye

In the past month I mostly just wrote NaNo updates because that was all I had the brain space for, but if you want to look back on them, go for it! Maybe we can commiserate on our struggles.

I also posted one YouTube video this past month, another sketch! You can watch it here, or you can watch it below!

More happened in normal life than I thought! The biggest and most important thing for me was the job hunt. I've been wanting to change my job for a little while now because I was ready for a change and the workspace itself was, unfortunately, getting pretty exhausting. So after a full buttload of applying and researching places, I landed a new job! For the sake of privacy I'm not gonna tell where it is, but just know that it's much more relaxing, and I'm really liking it there! Of course, I still have lots of friends at my old job that I'll miss, therefore I bawled like a baby on the way out, but I'll be back in there for shopping often and hopefully I'll see them then.

Obviously, I also did NaNoWriMo! I just finished this past Saturday, and other than writing blog posts, I'm planning to enjoy a good long writing break maybe even until the end of December, at which point I'll dive back into editing RCOBI.

I also tried to get back on course with planning and whatnot. I got way behind in week planning, in blog and Instagram planning, in a lot of planning, which wasn't helping with my frantic state. I'm trying to get more on track with planning things ahead of time so that I can keep up better.

Went to a psalm sing at my church, where I got to hang out with church members, sing plenty of songs, and devour pizza together.

I also got to decorate the sanctuary of our church with my sister and brothers.

And of course, Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, due to complicated circumstances, I didn't get to see my extended family this Thanksgiving. So my immediate family and I stayed at home and had turkey with a guy from our church. Despite everything else, it was a blast!