I didn’t mean to wait until the last minute to do this, but it’s March 31st so here I am.

Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow and it totally snuck up on me. I’ve tried doing the April or June iterations of NaNo a few times now, and I’ve never actually been very successful at it. It’s never had that ~November~ spark for me, like the “real” NaNo does.

This April, I already have a trip to Disneyland on the books, and a costume I need to finish, and an Anime convention to go to. Things are busy at work, and I’m going to the gym more, and it’s spring so there’s also this underlying desire to spend more time outside – but I’m going to do it. See my previous blog post about why this laundry list of things I’ve already laid out here has has has to be secondary to my goal of writing at least part of a first draft of my new book idea.

Because after all:

My Camp NaNo goal is 30,000 words. That’s a big lofty goal for the coming month, but it’s the most important thing so I’ve got to try.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails from NaNo in preparation for April 1st, and one had a really nice little exercise that I decided to do. I think the intention was probably to do it privately, for yourself, but I thought it would actually be a nice thing to share with others.

“Today, take ten minutes to write three affirmations: one for each of your three biggest fears or anticipated obstacles in starting your April writing project.”

1. I’m afraid I won’t make it to 30,000 words.

Kristina, that literally doesn’t matter. 30,000 is an arbitrary number that YOU picked and you just need to do your actual best and write as much as you can. Carve out time. Really do it. Whatever happens by the end of April, you can just keep writing in May. <3

2. I’m afraid I’m going to keep writing books with weak plots and flimsy characters.

Isn’t that why you’re practicing so much? Isn’t that what practicing is for? Isn’t that why you took that certificate course in fiction writing, to study story structure? Aren’t you already so much better than you were a year ago, and won’t you continue to improve?

3. I’m afraid people won’t like my books once I finally let them read it.

This is a big scary one, but you can’t worry about that right now. Just write. If you like it, someone else will too. And you’ll someday have beta readers to help you make it better, and then an agent and an editor to help to help you make it better, and even when it’s the very best it can be some people still won’t like it. But that’s okay. There are people who don’t like Harry Potter. Remember that.

Camp NaNo starts tomorrow! Who’s joining me?

I’ve been going through a bit of an adjustment lately. I think that’s the best way to put it.

It’s a few things, actually. I’ve always led a high-intensity life: thriving off of deadlines, challenging myself to fit more things in, trying to be the poster child for “you can do everything!” Then I started burning out. I started to realize I was doing everything but yet feeling like I had little to show for it. I started reading articles about the concept of wearing your “busy schedule” as a badge of honor, and it all sort of coalesced for me in a big ‘for what’?

I’m learning that’s not actually the life I want. So I’ve been trying to take steps to change it.

But it’s really not easy to unlearn a decade of bad habits.

I stumbled upon this quote the other day from Alice in Wonderland, and it really struck me. The quote goes:

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

That’s the world we live in. I finally saw the spinning exercise wheel for what it is, and I am slowly trying to get off. And to do that, I am trying to figure out where I actually want to run twice as fast, so I can slow down the rest of the time. Stop, even. Rest. Read a book. Watch a tv show for once.

So here are some of my adjustments. It’s a work in progress.

1. Job: I never wanted to be the kind of person to say this, but my job has somehow, without my noticing, become one of the most important things happening in my life. I started at Microsoft as a sort of personal experiment, because I love learning and I wanted to know what the 9-5 life was like. I wanted to experience a desk job. A corporate environment. Work on a large team of people.

A lot of people I know right now are quitting their jobs or stepping back from this lifestyle to pursue personal endeavors, a different path – but I’m the opposite. I’ve never done this before. I’ve embraced it later in life. This is my wild step into the unknown.

And so I spent the first year or so there with one foot in, one foot out.

I enjoyed the job – I did! But I rarely ever needed to stay late, I wasn’t very emotionally invested in my projects, I read books on my lunch break by myself.

Now, that’s changed in a lot of ways. I joined a new team over a year ago that started to feel more like a family, and I had a lot more responsibility given to me. Then I was hired as an actual Microsoft employee rather than a contractor, and was entrusted to help hire the folks that would go on to build a whole Community team for Windows. And then my role expanded to become a much more massive version of what I was previously doing, and guys – I really, really care. I don’t know when it happened, but I do. Work suddenly takes up way more of my creative energy than I ever let it before, but I’m doing such cool things that I realized I’m okay with that.

And while before, I was very adamant about not letting my job keep me from the “creative things I like to do” – now, trying to do both all the time… it’s killing me. There’s too much. And maybe it’s okay if my creative energy gets sucked up by the legitimately really cool things I do at work.

That realization, for me – was huge. My job is a massive part of my life now. That.. changes things.

2. Focusing: Now obviously I can’t become an office drone without any outside hobbies. I’m a creator. I make things. That’s never going to stop.

But it’s time to focus in on the really important stuff.

When you are kind of writing a book and kind of making videos and kind of doing regular cosplays and kind of running a book club and mostly keeping up with a writing prompt program and maybe writing blog posts and sort of committing to a laundry list of social and digital obligations, are you really doing any of it?

Kind of?

Does it feel powerful? Inspiring? Are you doing your best work? No.

I still don’t have a working solution for this particular problem, but I know the theoretical answer is focusing. If you want to write a book, that means making sacrifices. I used to view those sacrifices as like, dedicating Monday nights to writing and complaining a lot about never having any other time to write – but the sacrifices can’t all be social. They can’t be minor. If you want to do something big and lofty and hard, you have to make real sacrifices. You have to commit. Wanting to write a book might mean sacrificing making regular videos for awhile. Skipping a convention I like cosplaying at. Realizing I will never have an active Facebook fanpage because it’s too much work and I don’t actually really enjoy scheduling regular content for myself.

But the problem is, I’ve convinced myself that I have to do all these things. That somehow my whole identity is wrapped up in making YouTube videos and if I don’t, I’ll somehow cease to be me.

Well… that’s bullshit. Because if I’m not even doing any of it very well, what public image or brand am I really building for myself?

If I had to strip everything away but one, my singular focus would be on writing. The fact that I know that, in my heart and in my mind and in my gut means I owe it to myself to do something about it. So whatever it takes, whatever I need to cut out – I’m going to effing do it.

I am going to admit I haven’t been taking my personal vow to write a dang book as seriously as I should, and it’s going to happen.

And that might mean I won’t be around quite as much. It might mean I won’t make as many videos, or respond to emails in a reasonable time frame.

But I think that’s okay.

3. New life-affirming extra-curriculars: This is a bit of a departure from the rest of this blog post, but it’s another series of big adjustments that I think is notable enough to include. In trying to build better habits for myself around my personal projects, I started to see… other bad habits. And one by one, I’ve been fixing them.

I started going to a gym.

I started seeing a counselor.

Joe and I cook dinner together, like real food.

I stopped scheduling out every minute of every day, and I now only put appointments on my to-do list. Everything else (editing videos, finishing that sponsored post, working on cosplay, anything related to my online presence, catching up on email) I can pick and choose (when I have free time) from a casual, separate list. And if it’s not directly related to writing, I’ve decided that it’s all optional.

These things are making a incredible difference in my life, and even though some of it (gym, regular counseling sessions) actually take up more time.. I’m already finding that the emotional and mental clarity they add to my life more than makes up for that.

So this is why you might not have seen me around as much lately. This is why my Instagram might go a week without a new post. Why my blog posts are sporadic. Why I’ve not been cosplaying as much, or posting as many videos, or even remembering to tweet sometimes.

I’m trying to do better. I’m trying to do better to the projects I really care about, to my relationships and to myself.

So far it’s going okay.

Alright. Because of NerdCon, Emerald City Comic Con, wedding planning, and a bunch of craziness at work, I fell a little behind on #wordbound this past month. I’m really trying to be kinder to myself, so I decided to let myself off the hook for a few weeks. I think I am finally on the other side of the madness now though, which feels good.

I’m going to circle back and do a little catch up pretty soon, but for now, I figured I would skip ahead and actually do this week, because it’s easy and fun.

The prompt this week was to take an author picture and write an author bio. I didn’t have an actual photographer friend handy, so I stepped away from my desk at work today to take a little author selfie. It’ll have to do, for now. Also, see below for my silly attempt at an author bio.

Kristina Horner is the author of ten successful NaNoWriMo novels, but you wouldn’t know that unless you watch her YouTube channel, because she’s currently published zero of them. She is an aspiring author and life-long lover of words, and is currently working on multiple projects she hopes will actually reach your eyeballs in some sort of reasonable timeframe. Formerly a freelance content creator and musician, Kristina now works full time at Microsoft as a Community Manager. She spends her minimal free time crafting up believable excuses to get out of social obligations so she can stay home and write. She lives in Seattle with her fiance, an embarrassingly large collection of board games, and a menagerie of stuffed animals.

I will be back soon with more actual writing – I’m trying my hand at some short stories this month while I work on the outline for my new(ish) book. I’m planning to share a couple of them, including one that hopefully incorporates a few of my missed #wordbound prompts.