Book II Update | After A Week of Writing

Hello everyone! In my last blog, I shared that I would be taking a week's vacation to do nothing but write in Book II of The Odysseys of Alaythia. 

I'm happy to say that during that week I was able to write over 20,000 words! 

I pushed myself so much that I managed to get a small cold, which resulted in an ear infection. Yeah, I don't advise pushing yourself that hard, unless you really, really need to do so. Lol! 

Including a few thousand words after the vacation, which resulted in the completion of a new chapter, I'm happy to say that the new current word count of Book II is now 180,739 words. 

This was a week where I personally learned a lot about myself. I basically got to have the week I hoped would one day become my every work week: being a full-time writer and novelist. 

Even though I was living my future dream career that week, it was mixed with massive level of perfectionism, something that I'll admit can get the best of me.

Knowing that I only had a week to write as much as possible kicked my perfectionist insecurities into high gear, resulting in me setting a number of words I hoped to have completed to an extreme level.

The result? I wrote a lot, did not reach the absurd number that I projected for, and lost my hearing in my left ear for about a week.

In so doing, I also became so task oriented that I failed to enjoy the story.

Don’t get me wrong! There were some special moments and characters that I introduced to the story during this time—moments that had been scenes in my head for years that I finally got to write down on paper.

Nevertheless, one thing I learned was that I focused to such an extreme on the task that the joy slowly began to leave me, and I became imbalanced—much like how my ear infection caused me to be [You know, I asked God, “What was the purpose of this sickness?” I’ll have to say, it’s beginning to make sense now.].

All to say, dear Reader, if you have a task set before you, don’t forget to walk it out with proper balance, otherwise your body will fall out of balance. I chose not to walk in a healthy balance, and it took me getting an ear infection to hear wisdom correctly.

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