On day eight of the National Novel Writing Month I hit the wall in a bad and merciless way.

The wall, as near as I can tell, is the moment where your old habits show up at your house like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and announce they are “not going to be ignored“. There’s that game you haven’t played in a while and there are those articles you were going to read and there’s that book you haven’t been reading.

Unfortunately, at this point in the cycle, the initial feeling of inspiration and invulnerability is no longer enough to provide the willpower to carry you through the daily task (which can also include marking student exams). But, you still feel guilty about not doing it and can’t concentrate on doing anything else for very long.

I played the game a bit and then went back to writing. When I tired that I found myself writing a few lines and then drifting off in “deep thoughts” and then falling asleep (a temporary return to bad sleep patterns might be part of that).

It got so bad I even tried exercising.

Now, it’s also possible that this is a reaction to what I’m writing. Kimberly, my internal editor, is trying to get attention by telling me that the scene I’m working on is crap and not letting me enter the zone of “no mind” necessary to finish something like NaNoWriMo. The secret of NaNoWriMo is to always think “yes, I know it’s crap, but I’ll worry about that in post”.

I tried skipping the scene and starting a different one. That worked for a page or two, until the deep thoughts came back and I started falling asleep again.

I managed to finish 7 pages or about 1,295 words, which puts me at an average of 1,665 words a day, which is slightly behind the usual NaNoWriMo goal of 1,667.

Tomorrow’s another day, but the wall is real.