Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Taking time for recovery

At the beginning of March I left my job with the goal of refocusing on writing.

I was excited, I was enthusiastic…and I was exhausted.

As someone with chronic illnesses, one of them being Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as M.E.), it wasn’t surprising that I was at a physical low. The end of my work was stressful, emotional and I wanted to make sure I provided a great professional handover. But it all meant that as excited and enthusiastic as I was to continue on my writing journey, I had zero energy to actually take another step forward.

Rest & Recuperation

I decided to take some time out to simply rest and put my health first. In essence I set aside the plan that I created and took a vacation. This meant a delay to my main original fiction project, another stop on any works in progress, and, while I didn’t stop completely, I slowed on writing my Big Moxie Q1 challenge projects.

But I needed the time to simply nap in the middle of the afternoon if I needed to take a nap. I needed the energy back to cook nutritious fresh food for myself rather than just having take-out or resorting to easy processed food over cooking something from scratch. I needed time to breathe, curl up with a good cup of tea and a book for a few hours without worrying about what else I needed to do that day.

I took the time just to browse through my ideas folder, re-read some of my works-in-progress, and found some poetry hidden away in my writings snippets folder that was completely unpublished. Spending some time just to do a little bit of a refresh and rewrite on that felt like an achievement after feeling so poorly.

Really taking that first full week to simply recharge was a good idea.

Replanning

This week has been a slow reintroduction to doing more as I slowly adjust to having more energy to do things. The first thing I did was to take the plan and replan for the next three months – you can take the woman out of project management, but some lessons are just ingrained into my psyche at this point including the all important ‘to fail to plan is to plan to fail.’

The priority for March is going to be more recuperation and recovery time mixed with focusing on getting my Big Moxie projects completed and posted. I have the follow-up to Married to the Mob fully drafted, my second Harry Potter project is incomplete, and I may not complete the third project I had planned at all.

April and May will be given over to writing three fiction projects alongside some professional non-fiction. These three projects are:

1. My Original Fic – I really want to have the novel rewritten and ready for editing by the end of May.
2. A Jump to the Left – I’d like to get this completed and posted in May, although I wouldn’t be surprised if this slipped into June as May is likely to busy family-wise.
3. Earthly Fires – my 9-1-1 April Rough Trade challenge (link to the Project File here). I did prevaricate on whether I could fit this in with everything else, but I have an idea and I’d like to attempt it at least.

On the non-fiction front, I had a few inspirations (resting is great to get the muse reinvigorated!) which I’m exploring, but finishing the set-up of my own business is a priority for the next two months.

Steady as she goes…

I’m still not firing on all cylinders, but I feel like I have a workable plan at least and maybe I can’t tackle my refocus into writing at full speed as I had hoped to do, but I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made and as my energy levels creep back up, I can’t wait to do more.