50k Challenge Wrap Up

Wow, that was everything and nothing like I expected! I knew it would be hard to pull off with school being in full swing, but hey, I did it. Yes, I completed the challenge with 50,014 words within 30 days. Go me! Although victory does not taste sweet like victory cake. It tastes more sweet like the sticky sweet bitter of swallowing cold medicine. I tell you, rough drafts can be rough and this guy is ROUGH.

When I hit somewhere around the 25k mark, I fell out of love with the story. Don't get me wrong. I still love the premise and the characters, but everything about my execution was irking me. If I am fortunate enough to have someone ever say I make writing look easy, this shall immortalize the fact that it is not always a smooth road. I felt like I was forcing everything from how the characters were working together to how they made it plot point to plot point. Normally, if I hit a wall like this I would just hop over to another project and let that one sit in the proofing drawer until the yeast can sort itself out. However, because I was doing a 30 day 50k challenge and was half through with both, I did not have the luxury of time to fall back on my crutch.

However, that is what I think made this whole experiment worth while. It forced me to work differently from my norm, and it made me have to problem solve in new ways too. I was miserable, but I grew in writerly perseverance and knowledge of myself that can help me later. For one thing, it showed me what my crutches were in a fiction context and in a writing habit context. Pulling those crutches out of the closet is going to help me become a better writer because I now have things I know to work on and improve. It also showed me what I have going on that does work for me. One example is how dialogue was a huge problem solving tool. When I got stuck, like quicksand level stuck, I let my characters hash it out until something finally made sense.

Where does that leave this project? In the proofing drawer. There is still a lot of promise there, but there are way more bugs to work out. I will return to it after a good break where I can more accurately dissect what went right and wrong to get it back on track. Distance makes the difference. Right now, I am too wound up in everything I think went wrong to be able to objectively analyze what went down on the page. So, I will take a minimum of a month away from this one.

In the realm of what is next, I am really excited for December. I just got back my Alpha feedback on my newest project and it is very promising. Comments like "let me know when this is published" blessed my little writer heart. Especially because that same reader ripped off the Band-Aids covering the weaknesses in my story. Not only do I have positive comments, but also some accurate critique that is going to help me make this story even better. So, for December I am going to be working through feedback informed edits for Project G. I think it is a little too ambitious to say I will finish all the edits by the end of December, but that's my soft target. For anyone who is in my newsletter, it is about to pop off this next year with discussions of my quarterly goals for 2025 and I will outline what Project G's future is looking like.

Thank you to everyone who was supporting me through the harried madness of this 50k challenge. You kept me sane as I drove you insane. Now, it's on to the next adventure. I am so grateful to have you along on the journey.