Multilingual Writing Challenge, off the rails

It seems almost unbelievable to think that this time last year, I was sitting here in stunned disbelief that I’d managed to complete the writing challenge I’ve been taking part every November for at least a decade. It was the first time I ever managed to get over the finish line, and I swore it wouldn’t be the last. That may very well be the case, but I have to admit that this year… won’t be added to my list of successes. Well, that’s not strictly true, I guess it depends on your definition of ‘success’. In the parlance of the old organisation which imploded shortly before this year’s challenge began, I didn’t ‘win’. But I ended the month having written something, and really, that’s a success in and of itself. I have to believe that, and honestly, so should you.

I’m not here to make excuses. There’s no denying that mistakes were made, but I’d like to walk you through an explanation of exactly what happened – if only so I can avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.

At the beginning of the month, I was writing to beat the band. For the first couple of days, I even hand-wrote my daily words, surprisingly myself how little I actually had to look up when I was away from a computer – when writing on a laptop, the internet is right there, so you find yourself (or at least, I found myself) tempted to look up every word that doesn’t immediately come to you, to save time. This is completely understandable, especially when you’re juggling this with a full time job and trying not to let your home turn into some sort of woodland goblin grotto around you. But I found that if I took a minute, looked up from the page, the word I was looking for was usually tucked away somewhere and could be retrieved. Not always, of course, and there was a lot of looking in online dictionaries only to discover that in fact I did know that word, and should be summarily flogged for my idiocy. That may be a little harsh, but I am, after all, my own worst critic.

It wasn’t until I reached day 11 that things started to go wrong. A Monday, of course. I started feeling a bit funny that evening, but I wrote it off as having overdone it with the ol’ socialising at the weekend. But by the time I woke up on Tuesday, I was crawling up death’s porch on the way to their front door. I’d heard that there was a nasty ’flu going around, but hoo boy, they were not lying. I don’t think I’ve ever been knocked on my back by an illness like that ever before. But because I knew we were short-staffed at work, and because I work from home, I convinced myself that I absolutely couldn’t under any circumstances call in sick, and dragged myself out of bed to sit and shiver at my desk instead. By the time the work day was over, my brain was complete mush; I could feel it dribbling out of my ears. So no writing got done that day. Or the next day. Or the day after that. I convinced myself that if I could just get to the weekend, I could relax and catch up. But when the weekend finally arrived, I was so wiped out from trying to power through, I spent almost the whole 48 hours drifting in and out of consciousness and spending the time I was awake coughing up a lung. In fact, I was coughing so much and so hard, I actually pulled a muscle in my neck and ended up walking around like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz for a further week. By this point I was feeling pretty monumentally sorry for myself, and though I was certainly on the mend, the brain fog had lingered. By the time I started to feel normal (well, you know) again, I had missed about ten days of writing – and catching up seemed an unsurmountable task.

This is where I made my mistake. Well, it’s about my third so far in this story, but this is the really relevant one. Instead of just deciding that those days were a lost cause and starting to write again, I let the guilt from the days I’d missed completely throw me off. As a result, I didn’t write another word.

This chart is a little misleading, as the first three days were handwritten and haven’t been digitised and added to this yet, so my total word count for the month is actually 2,321 words. A smidge over a third of the goal. Not fabulous, but it’s better than a smack in the la-las with an antique mangle.

I think if I’m being charitable, I have to say that that’s 2,300 words I wouldn’t have written otherwise, and that’s something to be celebrated. I can only hope next year will one to add to my victory pile, though I definitely think I’m going to get a ’flu jab to avoid a repeat occurrence.

So that’s it for 2024! Did you take part in the Multilingual Writing Challenge this year? How did it go? If not, what put you off? As always, you can leave a comment here, or you can usually find me hanging around either Instagram or Threads (as @sprakskatan) or alternatively Mastodon (as @sprakskatan@toot.wales). I’m also thinking of maybe giving Bluesky a go, is it worth it? In any case, have a lovely festive period if you’re celebrating, or a peaceful end of the year if you’re not. I’ll be back in January for the traditional goal roundup. Until then, thanks for reading, and take care!

— J.

Cover image found here.