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Monday, April 14, 2025

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 15: Crunch Time

Last week was a whirlwind of work.  What had once felt like so much time to get ready for the show quickly became not enough.  And then the show was almost here, it was happening, and then it was over.

It's all a blur, but it was a lucrative blur, I guess.

I didn't get nearly as much done for the show as I had wanted, but even so, I did a lot of business and pulled in a good amount of money.  I can't remember how much I made at the show last year, but this year's was similar.  Next year I could probably bring in more if I'm better prepared.

Here's a quick rundown:

Writing

I was doing really well with writing every day, even if it wasn't very much, but of course that fell apart in the last few days: Friday and Saturday nights, when I was working hard to complete my projects, and last night, when I was exhausted from essentially a 12-hour work day on 2 hours of sleep.  Still, I set a streak record for the year so far of 11 days, which I'm pleased about.  A break for a few days around the show seems justifiable.

I also succeeded in getting my social media post up last week, although it was only the one.  And of course, I wrote my politics newsletter every single day except for Saturday and Sunday — Saturday because I was too busy prepping for the show, and Sunday because I was too exhausted.  I was asleep before 11pm last night, which almost never happens!

Decluttering and Organization

I decluttered in the kitchen and garage a little as part of preparing for the show.  That counts, right?

Dolls

Obviously, I worked on my dolls plenty, probably making up for the entire year in just a few days.  I am hoping to keep it up, too, just at a less hectic pace.

Taxes

With all of the preparations for the doll show, I didn't work on taxes at all last week, so I need to get back on it!  I am likely going to file an extension as there's no way I can finish everything I need to by tomorrow.  The key will be continuing to work on this daily after filing the extension, rather than waiting until the last minute before the extended deadline.

Lessons Learned

While I managed to pull off a pretty decent show, it would have been much better if I'd started preparing much earlier in the year, as I'd originally planned.  Even a month in advance would have made the whole thing much better, instead of trying to cram it all in during the week before the show.  I finish out the show every single year vowing to prepare more in advance the next year, and I never do.  However I think I would have this year if it hadn't been for the upsetting and chronically distracting political climate.

Now that the show is over, I am taking it easy for a couple of days, since I'm showing signs of burnout and overwhelm today — I'm easily distracted and taking a long time to do simple tasks.  But this week and next, I intend to establish a weekly rhythm where I'm balancing my time a little better between the things that matter.

Monday, April 07, 2025

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 14: Deadline Looming

Last week was a relatively productive week, which doesn't surprise me because I know how my brain works.  I have a new project and I have a deadline looming, both of which are motivating factors for me.

Writing

I actually managed to work on my novel every single day last week.

Of course, many days I only wrote 100 or 200 words (one day I wrote 13!), but what I am pleased about is that every single day, I made myself at least open up my project and add to it.  Even if it was only 13 words.  I kept it fresh in my mind and kept moving forward every day, and that's a massive win for me.

I only posted to my blog and my author Instagram twice.

Decluttering and Organization

I cleaned my counter space in the kitchen where I tend to let stuff pile up again (it's already accumulating more — must do something about that) and started organizing show stuff and assessing what I already have and still need for Sunday.  I'm still behind on what I wanted to get done, but it's a major step forward.

Dolls

I started organizing dolls to work on for the show, but haven't worked on any yet.  YET.  Today I'm going to go through project dolls, see what I can get done before the show and what each needs, and get to work.  I expect the rest of the week to be a rehab frenzy.

Taxes

Somehow I managed not to get anything done on this (except for I think like a dozen emails I sorted one night but didn't record since I didn't work on it very long).  I definitely need to ramp up my efforts this week.

Lessons Learned

It was a busy week, but I've got an even busier one ahead!  I think we're solidly in the "hang on for dear life and it'll be over soon" stage.  I know I was talking about taking a break to recover after the show, but I'll have a lot of deferred things that aren't going to get done this week, so I don't know if I'll be able to.

Monday, March 31, 2025

The End of NaNoWriMo

I know I already posted earlier today, but this is important.

Today emails went out to the NaNoWriMo community: The organization is shutting down due to lack of funding.  I will repost the full email below, omitting the embedded video since I don't want to give her any more views.

The email and the video lean into the idea that NaNoWriMo failed to come back from its crises the last couple years because the community sabotaged Kilby.  I argue otherwise.

Starting in early 2024, she emailed all of the Municipal Liaisons (volunteer regional coordinators, basically in-person event organizers and local points-of-contact for the organization) informing us of massive changes to the volunteer ML program.  We would have to go through extensive identification and background checks, and sign an oppressive contract that had clearly NOT been written by a lawyer.  After much debate, she put us on the back burner, and told us she would be in touch soon with more details.  (Spoiler alert: We never heard back.)

This is important because when NaNoWriMo functioned the way it should, the MLs actually drove both local participation and donations.  We encouraged writers, kept participants engaged, and promoted Double Up Donation Weekend and similar events.  So cutting us loose meant cutting loose organized local participation and a ton of donations.

Next, she made a statement about AI that many writers, especially those with disabilities and in lower socioeconomic classes, found offensive.  The entire community was up in arms, published authors bailed from the advisory board, and many longtime participants swore off NaNoWriMo, many even deleting their accounts entirely.

If you're keeping track, this means that by the end of summer, she'd not only cut loose all the volunteers who did much of the legwork to get donations, but also ostracized the community at large that provided the donations.

As November approached, we former MLs noticed a complete lack of communication from NaNoWriMo.  All of the usual prep emails, designed to drive anticipation and get people to commit to doing the challenge, were missing.  It also became obvious that there was little or no staff at HQ.  Whether that was from people leaving when management changed, or new management forcing people to leave, we don't know, but the end result was that HQ didn't have enough staff to do all the things that usually resulted in a flow of donations.

In other words, staff ran the fundraisers.  No staff, no fundraisers.

And without the staff, the big donation weekend that typically pulled in a huge amount of fundraising — the donation event that we MLs had all promoted at our events and in our emails in previous years — was never even scheduled.

Toward the end of the month, Kilby seemed to suddenly realize the organization wasn't getting funding, and several panic-button funding emails went out, but it was too little, too late.  By that late in the month, many writers have lost momentum and dropped out — especially without local events and MLs helping them to stay focused and keep going.

And then early this year, the news broke that NaNoWriMo had actually failed to renew their registration to accept charitable contributions.  As a result, they were listed as delinquent by the state of California and technically couldn't accept donations.

When you eliminate the volunteers and staff that get the donations, drive away the community that provides the donations, fail to solicit the donations, and don't even maintain your ability to legally accept the donations... uh, yeah, what did she think was going to happen to the organization's funding?!

So take Kilby's video blaming the community for killing NaNoWriMo with a grain of salt.  I think that's indicative more of Kilby's know-it-all attitude and her refusal to acknowledge her mistakes, both of which were frequently on display in our (MLs') dealings with her.

With all that in mind, feel free to read the original email, below.  If I can get a transcript of the video, I'll publish that too, as I don't want to give her video — which was posted to her personal account — millions of views and enable her to use that to monetize her YouTube channel over the dead carcass of the organization she destroyed.

To Our NaNoWriMo Community: 

We come to you today with sad news. After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down. 

Explaining how we got here is both simple and complex. The funding woes that have threatened so many nonprofits in recent years are an unextraordinary trend. Many beloved organizations announced their closure last year. Many more are fighting for their lives.  Media coverage of financial crisis within the sector—especially among arts nonprofits—has been widespread.

Yet, there are ways in which NaNoWriMo is extraordinary—and reasons why we had hoped we could buck that trend. The sheer size of our community, its global reach and its longevity, held at impressive levels, even during a tumultuous year. There is no shortage of writers who want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yet, building a community and being able to sustain it are two different matters. 2024 was a revelatory year.

In order to fully understand how we reached this decision, and why we view it as the only alternative, we encourage you to watch this video about the State of NaNoWriMo. The video also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps. Most importantly, the video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. The plot is thicker than you might think. 

We recognize that the closure of NaNoWriMo represents a huge loss to the writing community, and that grief over this outcome will be exacerbated by the challenges of the past sixteen months. This is not the ending that anybody wanted or planned. And—believe us—if we could hit the delete button and rewrite this last chapter, we would. But we do have hope for the epilogue. 

What’s next for NaNoWriMo, the indebted nonprofit, is much different from what's next for actual Wrimos. We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November (and April, and July) or stop seeking support for the journey they’re on. Many alternatives to NaNoWriMo popped up this year, and people did find each other. In so many ways, it’s easier than it was when NaNoWriMo began in 1999 to find your writing tribe online. 

Our greatest hope at this moment is that you do two things: support arts nonprofits you love (they really, truly need you) and keep writing words. Your stories matter. 

Thank you for all you have done for the organization, and especially for each other, over all these years.

Sincerely,
The NaNoWriMo Team

 A Few Additional Notes

  • We anticipate that some people might want to log on and capture information that is meaningful to them, like their lifetime word count or stats from previous seasons or challenges. We also anticipate that some folks on the Young Writers Program website may not have backed up work that they wrote directly into our system, and may wish to do so at this time. If there is something you feel you need to retrieve, you are welcome to try. However, our site tends to crash a lot when overrun with too much traffic (chronic technology underinvestment is mentioned in the video). We apologize for any inconvenience if the site gets crashy.
  • If you are a recurring donor, thank you for your ongoing support of the organization (truly). We have cancelled all recurring donations on our end in order to ensure that you will not be charged as we transition into our next phase. 
  • If you want anything from the NaNoWriMo store, please don't delay. We will shut that down soon as well. 
  • Finally, we have observed that, at times of change, many members of our community are in want of spaces to process these new developments, and that, historically, we have hosted many all-community online spaces. Unfortunately, we have very limited resources to reply individually to comments or to moderate our social spaces at this time. We will do our best but make no guarantees. 


2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 13: Busy Week

Last week started out pretty productive, but ended in several busy days, so I didn't end up getting as much done on my goals throughout the week as I'd wanted.  But I did do things, as you'll see shortly.

Writing

Last week I worked on my novel exactly one day, Tuesday.  I did also get a post up on my author Instagram.

It's not an effort toward my goals, but I did do a lot of writing last week.  On Thursday, I started my politics newsletter on Substack, What to Know Today.  Thursday's and Friday's posts were lengthy and took a lot of writing and research, and I've posted every day since.  I do need to keep working on my novel, of course, but it's not like I wasn't doing anything last week.

Decluttering and Organization

This category is more or less on hold until after the doll show, but I did get some work done in the garden over the weekend, which I'm counting because decluttering my patio and cleaning up my garden is definitely one of my projects for this year.  Right now it's a mess, but I'd like my patio and garden to eventually be a place where I can get doll pictures.

Dolls

I got so busy that I didn't work on any dolls last week either.  This week I really need to buckle down as the doll show, which seemed so far away for the longest time, is now rapidly approaching.

Taxes

My goal is to work on this a little every day until it's all done.  I did work a little each day for several days on organizing income and expense emails, but at the end of the week I got really busy and didn't get any more done on it.  I need to get back to work on that this week, along with working on getting dolls ready for the show.

Lessons Learned

Last week got off to a really good start; it was when I babysat a lot Thursday and Friday that I lost the thread.  The weekend ended up really busy too, with a whole lot of errands to run on Saturday that we'd been putting off all week, and a long time spent at the barn on Sunday.

I'm hoping this week will be more productive, but I'm also considering focusing only on those two things this week: prepping for the doll show, and taxes.  It may mean not writing much over the next couple weeks, and being okay with that.  Except for the new newsletter, of course — that I intend to keep up.

Monday, March 24, 2025

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 12: Sick Days

Last week was rough.  I started out relatively productive, but toward midweek I started to go downhill as I caught my husband's cold, which I mentioned in last week's post.  I bounced back a bit over the weekend as I started to feel better, but still didn't recover enough to do all the things I had wanted to do.

I also am adding a new category to my weekly rundown: taxes.  Since we're into tax season and Tax Day is only two days after the doll show, I'll need to prep for both the doll show and taxes on pretty much a daily basis from now until then.  I used to be so organized with my income and expenses throughout the year, maintaining a spreadsheet and filing receipts all year, and now I just have a crate of receipts and a bunch of unorganized email receipts.

But without further ado, here's the rundown:

Writing

Last Monday was the last time I worked on my novel.  Obviously being sick I get a pass for that, but I need to get back into the habit this week.  On Monday I had a 7-day streak of working on it every day.  Right now I have a 7-day streak of not working on it every day.  I don't want the current streak to continue.

I did get a social media post up last Monday, but that was the only one.

Decluttering and Organization

This didn't happen — too sick.  I will probably have to shelve some of these projects until after the doll show so that I can focus on getting ready for that (and on doing taxes).

Dolls

This also didn't happen, but with the doll show coming up, I anticipate I'll be making up for all year's worth of neglect within the next three weeks.

Taxes (New Category)

Over the weekend, I started going through emails for income and expense records.  Right now I'm not sorting through what everything is, just chucking it all into a designated folder for the year, and I'll start going through it when I start building out my income and expense spreadsheets.  I'm going to be using a new system this year, so it'll take a little work to get it all set up, but I think it'll work better for me when it's all finished.

Lessons Learned

I am grateful to the article I spotted that reminded me Tax Day was fast approaching.  I've gotten so bad at procrastinating and I want to create better habits — get back to tracking income and expenses throughout the year, if possible, so that there's less work at the end of the year.  Rebuilding my entire year in April is labor intensive and incredibly stressful.

I suspect I won't be as good about writing almost every day over the next three weeks.  I'm still going to try, but I'm also going to give myself grace if I don't always meet that goal.  Now through April 12th, however, my goal will be to work on doll rehab or show prep every single day, and to work on tax prep at least a little every day from now until Tax Day (or until it's done).

I am definitely going to need some recovery time once the show and taxes are all done!

Monday, March 17, 2025

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 11: Sike!

I might be dating myself with that post title, but I totally feel like my life tricked me right now.  I was feeling motivated early last week and totally thought I'd have a productive week, but a bunch of last-minute babysitting, a day trip on Friday (okay, I knew about that one, but still) and an unexpected illness conspired to make my week less productive than I had hoped.

Writing

In this area I actually was pretty productive.  I worked on my novel six out of seven days last week, missing only Monday.  Some of it was research, watching YouTube videos of mares foaling for the novel I'm working on, but I still counted it even though it wasn't words on the page.  I ended up getting over a thousand words written late last night.  And if I can keep up working on it, I can keep my current streak alive.

Decluttering and Organization

I didn't have a chance to do anything in this department last week, since we took it easy over the weekend and napped a lot.  My husband caught a cold from work, and I'm trying my best to stay healthy and not catch it, too.

Dolls

I didn't get anything done in this department either, for the same reason.

Lessons Learned

I'm still not in the clear yet as I could still catch my husband's cold, but I'm hoping to stay healthy.  Either way it'll mean not a lot gets done for a few days, because I'm going to try to take things easy in the hopes of keeping up my immune system.  I do hope to get a few things done (and maintain my writing streak!) but between that and several other things that have already come up, I don't expect any groundbreaking productivity this week.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 10: Progress

Progress has been slow, but I can still see signs of it.  I had a more productive week last week, and have been feeling more motivated overall.  This is an improvement over the previous week, when I was only just starting to feel like I was coming back from my slump.

Writing

I worked on my novel four days in a row last week, Monday through Thursday.  I had hoped to keep up the streak a little longer, but we had a busy weekend and I wasn't able to get any writing time in.  A future goal will be to make sure I get writing time on weekends, but it didn't happen this time.

I posted to my author Instagram four times as well.  A lot of it has been political stuff, but hey, it's posting, right?

Decluttering and Organization

It's minor, but I'm going to count it as a win: Last week I did all the laundry and put it away the same day (some of you know how hard this can be), and I started cleaning up the garden for spring.  I'd like to be able to enjoy my patio this year, but it's been very neglected the last several years so it's going to take some work to get it back to where it looks nice and feels like somewhere I can sit and hang out again.

This week I'm hoping to get more done in the garden, and hopefully get caught up on some projects inside as well.

Dolls

No progress here last week, but I anticipate that changing this week.  I have a lot to do still to get ready for the doll show, which is in just one month now!

Lessons Learned

Coming back from burnout or overwhelm is possible, but it's an excruciating, uphill battle and progress takes time.  Still, I feel like I did much better last week, and hopefully will see even more improvement in the next couple of weeks, as the doll show deadline looms.

On that note, though, I fully expect the mad rush to get ready for the show to kick me back into a burnout state.  I might purposely schedule a week or two of recovery time with few responsibilities and see if that helps.  In the past, when I've tried to skip recovery time after a big event like this show, what normally happens is that it just prolongs the burnout over weeks or even months.

I'll deal with that when it comes.  What matters right now is holding it together for the next month so that I can be ready for that show!

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