Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Or, my love-hate relationship with challenges.

I have a love-hate relationship with challenging myself.

I love challenges because they provide focus on a specific goal. They create a framework in which to pursue a passion, to create something, to improve something. They are brilliant to achieve.

I hate challenges because they can quickly feel restrictive and more like a prison. There are rules to be followed. The action required to progress can lose all its fun and start to feel like a chore. The need to do the challenge deprioritises other things which really shouldn’t be deprioritised.

I took up a writing challenge for April. I really need to learn that April is just not a good month for me to do a challenge. While the first week went somewhat well, the past two weeks have been a struggle.

Some of it is undoubtedly because I’ve been in a kind of weird work limbo getting a six-month contract sorted. The contracting took more time than I expected, the start date was only confirmed on Friday, and it has meant that doing any kind of meaningful planning for the next few months was difficult. Moreover, I needed to keep other contracts bubbling along while I got it sorted so coaching, training, and trying to get my professional articles done was still something I had to spend time on – all while not really knowing how the contract was going to impact things moving forward.

Luckily with the contract now signed and the start date agreed, I can start this week to pin down the plan. And planning is going to be important as I assess how I can write, work, keep my business bubbling along, and keep my health on an even keel.

Speaking of health, I decided to try to do a variant of the 75 Soft challenge specifically focusing in on exercise. I figured I would try to do 10 mins of exercise to start, build in rest days when my body needed it, and hope to build up to 45 minutes by the end of the challenge. It started well – I found a great 10-minute video of stretching exercises to do and was able to build a walk into my day for a few days. Unfortunately, then my body protested pretty heavily, and I’ve had to rest for a few days. This is the problem with a chronic condition which does flare-up due to physical activity. I probably tried to do too much too soon. Still I have 75 days to complete the challenge, and all is not lost yet. I can’t get discouraged. I just need to dust myself off and try again.

With so much else going on, my mind has struggled for the bandwidth to create and write. I’m in the middle of a rough draft challenge for A Potioned Affair, the sequel to my Harry Potter/The Sentinel fanfic, A Framed Investigation. It has not been going well. The story decided to do its own thing, twisting out of my plan like a wily kitten who then peed all over the remaining plot. I’m still hopeful I can get it complete before I start the contract but it is going to be a close run thing.

The real world drama of the JK Rowling/Trans row has been playing on my mind too. I do love the characters and sandpit she created, I love playing in it, but I disagree with her opinions and very much object to how she has expressed them. I consider myself a LGBTQ+ ally and it is difficult to reconcile that and continuing to write in the Harry Potter fandom (especially in these flashpoint moments like the ruling from the UK Supreme Court re the Equality Act 2010 gender definition), even though my philosophy has always been very much about separating art from the artist (and I respect that for some that philosophy feels like an excuse and not true allyship when there is so much hate and erasure going on in society). So while I chew over the moral quandary, I’m not finding it easy to write Harry Potter.

My other writing is also just…not really happening. And that makes me unhappy.

I have a great idea for a series of original short stories, I want to do the third story in the Iolaire Bay series, and I have the second novel plotted out in my head. Not to mention, I still need to source a book cover for the first novel, figure out a marketing plan, and go through the editing suggestions from the friend who did the copy edit.

Not to mention, I have two more Promise Interludes in mind, the next Aftershocks story…

There are only so many hours in the day.

Prioritising and planning are going to be my secret weapons this week as I get everything mapped out and give myself headspace.

Wish me luck!

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