As much as I was looking forward to it months ago, it looks like the best thing for me to do is bow out of the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo, that I was planning on participating in. It’s been a difficult summer real-life-wise, and issues with our mortgage (namely, attempting to refinance it) that I thought were going to be resolved by now most definitely aren’t. Given the stress I’m already under, I’ve realized that I really don’t need to add more to it, even for something positive — and I already have enough works in progress to finish, without putting them all on hold for another month so I can just add another project to the pile.
I considered still participating, but just doing what I can and accepting that I won’t cross the 50K word mark to win, but… well, I’ve done NaNoWriMo three times now and camp once, and won every time, and I hate the thought of just setting myself up to fail — or worse, winding up determined not to fail whatever the cost to my emotional, mental, and/or physical health.
At this point, I think what I’ll do is wait for the original NaNoWriMo in November and try again. By that time, I should be able to have a better idea of what the novel is supposed to be and what’s supposed to happen, anyway, since I never had enough time or energy this month to work on brainstorming and outlining the way I wanted to. And by that time, something has to have been figured out that lets us keep the house.
So, apologies to my cabin mates, but maybe I’ll see some of you in November…