Meilo Zaborowski: Author

Guess who’s back, back again

Holy shit, where has the time gone? I meant to take a break for a few weeks and… it turned into a few months. Whoops.

So what’s been happening? I moved into an apartment with my boyfriend(!!!), I graduated from TSTC with my AAS in Cyber Security, we got a husky puppy (his name is Atticus and he’s gorgeous), I got my Network+ certification, still haven’t found another job yet, and my mental health has been slowly circling the drain. I’m seeing a therapist and my primary doc has put me on Prozac, which I’ve been on for just over 3 weeks. It’s been… a lot.

But part of my healing is gonna involve me getting back to writing. So here we are. Goals, y’all!

GOAL 1) TAP 2 (ACTUAL TITLE PENDING)

My clear target is: Finish sequel to The Atheist’s Prayer
My reachable deadline is: December 31, 2021
My working days are: Fri-Sun (maybe Tues?)
My method of measuring progress: Word count
My end goal: Finish the damn thing (preferably 50,000 words)
My daily goal, and number of available days: Write 500 words, 3 days a week. So 1500 words a week. At least.
My leverage — WHY I need to do this: To further my name as an author and hopefully sell more books. I’m also losing my ever-loving mind right now and I need to get back to writing regularly because it’s one of the few things that keeps me sane and functioning as a relatively normal human being.

And since I actually have been writing here and there in the interim, here’s my progress so far.

Goal 1) TAP 2

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 27,000 words
Where I am: 27,239 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
My extended absence notwithstanding, I’ve made some good progress. After I hit the midpoint, I took some time to map out a good chunk of the rest of “act two”, or at least lay out the skeleton (which if you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know this is my modus operandi at this point). For some reason, looking at the hefty wordcount I have left to go is far more daunting than looking at the estimated number of scenes left… which is obviously a much smaller number. Go figure. -eyeroll-

Everything happens so much

Between trying to wrap up the last few weeks of school, applying for jobs, and all the other personal stuff I’ve got going on, I unfortunately have decided to put writing on hold for the time being. It’s not ideal, and I hate to do it, but I just need everything to settle down a little. I will reevaluate my goal and a potential due date hopefully in the next few weeks.

…This isn’t to say that I won’t be writing at all, though. I just…don’t have the spoons to hold myself accountable to a word count for a set number of days a week. And the further behind I get, the more it’s gonna stress me out, so yeah.

Forward Momentum

Goal 1) TAP 2

My Goal: 500 WPD, 2000 WPW
Where I planned to be: 24,000 words
Where I am: 23,573 words
On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
Trying to catch up. Not doing too bad, I don’t think. Been dealing with a lot in the real world lately, so I feel like only being down less than a day’s worth of words isn’t terrible. There’s no sense in beating myself up about it anyway.

All I can do is keep moving forward.

Fuck

Goal 1) TAP 2

My Goal: 500 WPD, 2000 WPW
Where I planned to be: 24,000 words
Where I am: 21,683 words
On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
So my coworker was out on vacation this past week. Normally, that would mean nothing to me, but apparently, none of the other locations in town wanted to help us out, so I ended up working open to close (7:30am to 6pm) all week.

For the math challenged, yes I worked almost 50 hours last week. Great for the paycheck. Not so good for anything else.

Needless to say, I had no time for anything, including writing and schoolwork. And once I had time yesterday, I was scrambling to try to get my schoolwork done before it was due, which is today.

Where does this leave me? Well, I’m still on track, amazingly, to finish by the end of June. But my buffer is almost completely gone now. And I still have another 6 weeks of school left. School is definitely more important, so any snafus with time from here on out will cut into my writing before anything else, unfortunately. That’s just the way it’s gotta be. And if I end up with a full-time job, that’s probably gonna cut into my writing too.

At this point, all I can do is roll with it and keep trying, writing whenever I can.

Getting there

Goal 1) TAP 2

My Goal: 500 WPD, 2000 WPW
Where I planned to be: 22,000 words
Where I am: 21,683 words
On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
Still haven’t quite caught up, but I’m close. The brilliant idea I had last week sprouted another idea, and there’s gonna be some… well, I hesitate to say torture, but ah. Madison’s getting hurt.

I’d say I like torturing my characters too much, but what kind of author would I be if I didn’t?