“Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits.” – Robert Puller

I will be the first to admit that my 2023 did not go according to plan. This time last year I had so many plans for what I wanted to accomplish during the year, not realising that my health was starting to take a turn for the worse.

At the end of 2022 I was put on some new medication to help me tackle my neurological condition IIH as my old medication wasn’t working efficiently enough to stop the spinal fluid building up on my brain. Like all new medication the beginning is usually when the side effects start to show their ugly heads, for December 2022 I was like an extra in the Walking Dead, it turned me into a zombified, barely stay awake human being. Okay, so I wasn’t craving human flesh, but my thinking powers disappeared as the hours and days blurred into one, with eyes that could barely stay open. I did a lot of working from home that month as I wasn’t safe to drive and I overslept more alarms than usual.

Fast forward to January, I was starting to feel a little more human, and a little more functional. At least in the sense that I could stay awake. Other side effects had taken hold by that point, but I was in firm denial that anything was wrong – January last year was not a good month.

I suffer badly with guilt when I am ill, and try and push on no matter what, or how bad I feel. On top of my IIH I also suffer from Chronic Migraines and try and work with them as much as I can, now if you suffer from migraines yourself, or know someone who does you know how silly that attitude can have, but I average 3 a week currently, but at my worst it was 20+ a month. Back in 2023 and further I put this huge amount of pressure on myself to be in work because I had the fear of losing my job if I kept taking time off. I’m sure it’s a fear a lot of people have, especially when workplaces can be unsympathetic towards people who have chronic illnesses and the way society as a whole punishes people if they can’t give 100% to the grind at all times.

I am getting a little bit off track, going back to January, I was going into work, plastering a fake smile on, and pretending everything was okay, while inside a shit-storm was happening. When I eventually got to see the Dr on February 1^st she was on to the phone to my neurologist that day. (I live in the UK in Wales, so usually its GP and then specialist like my neurologist when things go wrong and even then my neurologist works in a hospital across the border in England who happens to consult in hospitals in Wales on specific days) initially I was signed off work for two weeks, slowly weaned off the new medication and told I would be seeing my neurologist by the end of February. That appointment never came, and I was signed off again and again while I dealt with the aftermath of the new medication, and my IIH wasn’t being controlled by anything. Overall I was off work 8.5 months last year, I didn’t see my neurologist until the end of May, when my vision started to go, and I had an emergency lumbar puncture in order to drain the excess spinal fluid putting pressure on my brain.

There is a point to my long-winded explanation, and I am coming to it, I promise. In the chaos that was last year, I went months without writing a single word, or opening my laptop, but on the days I did have the energy I was able to write, and I managed to write both the second draft of Shelter Me From Darkness, send it off to Beta readers and then write the third draft.

I sent my manuscript to my editor on Wednesday the 3^rd of January 2024.

Now getting back to my point, I still managed to write and edit a 1 book last year. It took me far longer than I anticipated, but I still did it. Which means that this year, 2024 I can hopefully achieve a lot more.

I’m still not a 100% my condition is still in its flare up stage but I am back on medication that is for the most part doing what its supposed to, and I have gone from 20+ migraines a month to averaging at 3 a week. It’s still a lot, I know, but compared to what it was, it’s a whole different game and I’m back in work as well.

So my ultimate goal this year is to form a health writing habit that works for me, that allows me to balance both my health but also still get things done and accomplish my writing goals.

Now I can’t predict my bad days, or my migraines, but I want to create a writing habit that allows for rest days/break days when I need them or when I want to take them.

So, my plan for Q1 is to write 4-5 days a week and, for my weekly total to be 5,000 – 7,500 words a week. That allows me to fit in around the day job, but also give myself a guilt free day when I can’t physically write because I have a migraine or take a rest day to prevent me working myself into one, or even when I am having a bad IIH day.

It means that for the next twelve weeks I could write anything between 60,000 – 90,000.

If it works and I’m able to sustain it for Q1 then I am going to continue on for the rest of the year and could potentially end up with anything between 240,000 – 360,000 words.

I seem to write around a 93k drafts could be 3-4 books, if I was just writing first drafts, one after the other and not editing. But that isn’t the focus really, the focus is to form that writing habit that works for me, and balances between being creative and my health.

And that’s me for now, a bit of a longwinded post to say I am focusing on forming a writing habit this quarter but that is my plan.

Until next time.