 It is Wednesday the 17th of November and you are looking at someone who has realized she is not going to win NaNoWriMo this year. And it's been a couple of days since I've filmed, it's been a couple of days since I've written because I've been on, not only have I not been riding, I've also been on a bit of an emotional journey around this. So my original plan for NaNoWriMo was to do five days of riding a week because I wanted to keep up with going to the gym. So during the week I go to the gym on Mondays and Thursdays before work because they're the days I work from home and then I also go once on the weekend. So my plan was Mondays and Thursdays I would not ride, I would gym, I would work, I would do whatever I had after work or just recover and then the other five days of the week I would ride. So five days a week seemed realistic. My first week did not go to plan. I finished week one, 10,000 words behind. Last week I did do about the amount expected of NaNoWriMo. So I was still 10,000 words behind but the gap hadn't increased, there was still a chance I could catch up. Then Sunday night I had a terrible night of sleep, in fact in general I have not been sleeping well for the last probably month. So on Sunday I had a really bad night of sleep and in the morning I decided instead of going to the gym it would be better for me just to sleep in a bit later. So woke up like 20 to 8, got up, got dressed, popped onto my laptop to catch up on work because it was my first day back after a week off. Full day of work, finished around 6 and then after work I actually had a rug that I was picking up from a Facebook marketplace so that was scheduled for 7.30 so I had like an hour when I decided I'd work on editing the video from last week which was an hour of footage that I cut down to about half an hour. So we get in the car, go out to collect the rug, Drew realises that he can potentially get a chest of drawers in the same day and for some reason I got really, really car sick. I have had a history of motion sickness, it doesn't happen so much anymore but occasionally like I'll just get very, very nauseated while in a car or a boat or something and this was one of those times so we got home around 8 and in theory I could have done a bit of riding them but I just felt so sick that I went straight to bed, I had toast for dinner and felt awful and at the same time I started feeling awful about nanorhymo because again in theory I could have been able to ride that day, I didn't end up going to the gym so it should have been a riding day and yes I had something on in the evening but it wasn't a big thing, it was to collect a rug and it started to hit me that like the state I'm in at the moment and the state my life's in at the moment just like one small thing can throw everything out of whack and I don't really have enough, I don't know about time but I don't have enough just space in my life for one thing to not go to plan and as soon as one thing collapses everything else is so fragile that it falls down around it and I started thinking there's no way I'm going to be able to win nanorhymo with my life like this and aside from nanorhymo I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to ride consistently with the way my life is at the moment and then on Tuesday so because I didn't go to the gym on Monday I went to the gym on Tuesday morning before work, had my full day of work and then after work I had a French lesson because Tuesday nights I have French so that was another day lost because it's just a lot on in one day and now it's Wednesday and I've lost two more days I'm sitting at 13,937 words I should be at what 28,339 words so I'm almost 15,000 words behind now and I've like even yesterday I was thinking well on my best days I've done like 3,000 words a day so maybe I just need a few more days like that and I counted out the number of riding days I had left if I go with my five day week plan there were ten riding days including today and I'd have to do 3,600 words on every one of those days which like I don't think I can do that on a working day I just don't have the mental space and then today I woke up at 1.30 in the morning so I've had three and a half hours of sleep and you know I tried to get back to sleep after a couple hours I you know got up had some food took a half hour break from trying to sleep and then when tried to get back to sleep and at 5 a.m. I gave up basically I have this rule if I'm up and it's after five then I get up and because I was so tired like I didn't really feel like I could write something new but I thought I haven't actually gone back and reviewed anything I've written yet I have about 20,000 words now which aside from a whole failing nanorhymo thing like it's kind of cool to have 20,000 words of a new book so I copied that from for the words which I've been using to draft into a word document and I thought okay I'll use this time before work to go through it and admittedly like I was moving very slowly because I was trying to like do research on Renaissance Venice and fill in some of the gaps and I've realized that some of it I'm probably just not going to be able to fill in until I can do a trip to Venice and actually do a tour of a Renaissance home and see what things looked like inside so I got through maybe half of that added another 300 words so that's better than nothing but it's barely a dent in what I have left and now it's what now it's quarter past eight as soon as I finish filming this I've got to go to work full day of work and then after work I have a little bit of freelance stuff to do so I don't do much freelance work but I used to have a business and I agreed to help the current managing editor train up some new editors so I've got a training call with one of the new editors this afternoon and then next week I'm actually reviewing another one of the new editor's books so I just don't know what to do and then tomorrow will hopefully be a good day because well tomorrow is not supposed to be writing day because I've got the gym in the morning so but tomorrow after work I don't have anything so that should be okay but on Friday we're picking up like another rug and again that won't take long but what if I get carsick again what if I haven't slept and this is what I was talking about like everything feels you know so precariously balanced that going to pick up a piece of furniture sends it all crashing down and you know I just don't know what to do and nano-rhymo is disappointing like I do I would really like to win it again I just don't think it's possible at this stage unless I somehow get next week off work which is not going to happen but beyond nano-rhymo I just don't know how I'm going to write and I feel like something has to give but I don't have that much that can give I mean the freelance stuff like from next week I can say no I'm not taking on anymore so that's fine and to be fair that isn't much it just happens to be like I've got something tonight and something next week but French lessons like that's once a week and this I think is my last chance to actually try and become fluent in French because if we leave Switzerland and I'm not fluent yet like it's not going to happen I studied at school didn't get fluent though foreign languages in Australia aren't taught at that high a standard like unless you first-generation Australian and your parents send you to Vietnamese school or Greek school or Polish school or something on a Saturday morning but through the traditional school system standard's not that high and I lived in Paris for a year and didn't become fluent now I'm living in Switzerland for the next year maybe a bit longer if I don't become fluent now like it's not going to happen so I would prefer not to get rid of the French lessons and the gym is like necessary it's not a luxury it's for my physical health and for my mental health and then other than that like everything's the job and obviously I'm not quitting my job like one I do like the company I do like the people I don't want to do that to the team two they are the reason I'm legally living in Switzerland if I kick the job I need to leave the country so there are only really these three regular things none of them can go and when it's just these three regular things there is some time for writing not a lot but as soon as anything else gets added to the mix it falls apart but for now until we find a solution I need to head to work also one more thing before I go so the last time I did anorama was 2019 I did win one of the things I did was um I would go to a cafe during my lunch break on the days when I wasn't going to the gym and I would write during my lunch break that's not an option with this job because the days when I'm not in the office I don't go to the office because I have meetings constantly like I might have a half hour break so there's no time to go somewhere and write the days when I'm in the office like we have a lovely office manager who actually goes and buys us lunch each day like which is the nicest thing it's a huge perk and it's great food and we've got great colleagues and it's nice like it's really nice to spend time with them not focusing on work but there's one opportunity for writing gone and like I'm not going to be the I know maybe I should just be the person who leaves at lunch and goes to a different cafe to avoid everyone so I can write but yeah I'm not going to do that wow look at this look at this so um hello happy Friday I just got a new phone and it looks really nice one of the issues is though that um it's an iPhone 13 which means it has no headphone jack so I can't use my earbuds with it which I just bought like two weeks ago so look annoying can't use my mic with it either so no audio for Jackie um I mean I guess I still got my old phone so maybe I could record audio with that anyway so new phone um it's Friday I have not been doing any writing though I am feeling much better than I was feeling on Wednesday when I last filmed because I slept like I've had really good sleep for the last two days I woke up at 8 30 this morning which is so late for me um but I've slept and made a big difference I'm feeling much better and um I'm okay we're not winning Nana Rhymo I realized I mean I knew this at the time when I was talking the other day but I've realized that the purpose of Nana Rhymo for me at least is to get back into writing and if I want to be a working writer I should do it in a sustainable way and it wasn't sustainable before so I'm planning to take tonight off I haven't actually written all week like not since the weekend and that's okay I'm going to take tonight off because I feel like I need tonight off and then tomorrow I'm going to get back to writing and I'm not going to try and make up the lost time I'm just going to try to get back to writing and write the best first draft I can hello and happy Saturday so if you can hear that music in the background that is me on hold with my bank in Australia because after switching everything over to the new phone I've um realized I cannot access any of the financial apps my Estonian bank account I can't access because I had touch ID on my old phone the new phone has face ID and I can't switch the login method without you setting up another login method previously I used something called smart ID which I didn't find out until after we moved here that it expires after three years and without having a residence permit card anymore or being in Estonia and being able to go to a branch I couldn't reset that so I can't access my Estonian bank account and that's not an issue today but it will be an issue in a few months when I get paid back for my pension because I'm not going to retire in Estonia so um can't access my crypto account with work but that should be fairly easy to sort out on Monday I'll just let support note that I've switched phones can't access my Swiss bank account because it's treating me as a new customer so I need to wait for a letter to send me a pin so I can access it and I can't access my Australian bank account because it wants to send me a text verification and they only have my Estonian number which is no longer active so I'm on hold with my bank in Australia to get the setup with my Swiss number so but at least the phone has a night camera so if I ever get off the phone with the bank the plan for today is to catch up on some writing like I said yesterday I'm not planning on catching up in terms of nano-riMo I'm not sure what the target word count is for today I'm not going to be pushing to try and achieve that I just want to work on my book because I like the story it's been 32 minutes and 55 seconds and I'm writing but this is not the soundtrack I have been working with on this project so far yeah it doesn't really say Renaissance Venice to me I moved to countries and I've changed phones and I need to switch the device that I use the Conbank app on but it's wants to send a verification code to my old number which isn't available anymore so I'm calling you to change my number so it has now been an hour and nine minutes I've been on the phone to a support person for about the last half hour of that time and we don't know what's going on so my phone keeps trying to sign me and using my old mobile number that's no longer active we deleted it set up the new number deleted the app tried logging in again and now it doesn't think I'm registered at all and I don't have the app on my old phone anymore either so I can't access any of my Australian with banking information so a little annoying but the good news is I did get 20 minutes of writing done when I was on hold so that was another 900 words one hour 14 minutes and 29 seconds and we're done I can access my bank details again so now that that's sorted I'm going to try and get a little bit more writing done so I'm really stuck on the next part of the book so what I wrote earlier today when I was on hold with the bank was sort of the debate if you follow save the cat so once there's like the call to adventure there's supposed to be a debate when you talk about the pros and cons and so on and that was an argument between Chiara and her best friend Roberto in this case and not through that that was about 800 words and now they've got to go on the journey to find the witch and this has been a bit of a question mark for me since I first started planning this because I'm not really sure what's going to happen like on the road and the thing is this is not a road trip book like we're probably 25 to 30 percent of the way through the book already let's say 25 percent and I want the turning point when Chiara is accepted by the witch to be the 50 mark so we've got like let's say another 15 20,000 words until we get there but the thing is she is going to meet the witch and there will be like a bit of an interaction there so that could potentially be a couple of thousand words before the midpoint so there isn't that much ground to cover and this leaves me in this weird place where well I don't feel like there's any point in investigating like road trip conventions and tropes and so on because it's not a road trip book but there is still like quite a bit of ground to cover so there does need to be something happening there and another part of me is like well maybe I should just skip ahead to where we meet the witch and I can come back and let future Jackie deal with this and one of the things I've been noticing in this draft is that I think this has been because it's been so long since I've completed a first draft but I don't seem to have any context for what first draft Jackie is supposed to do and what revision Jackie is supposed to do and there are problems I see now mainly the relationships like I really want to build up Chiara and Roberto's friendship I want to build up Chiara's relationship with the glass master and like their sort of mentoring relationship and I'd also like to establish the family dynamics a little bit more I do know what those dynamics are I just haven't really had a chance to explore them because we've only really had like one scene with the family and yeah I feel like there needs to be something else so I'm okay with that being future Jackie's problem I don't know if I'm okay with leaving a whole chunk of the book unwritten for future Jackie to deal with just because if I can't think of a way to write it now and I can't think of an exciting way to tackle it now then doesn't need to be there at all I don't know I do know I want some more time with Roberto and Chiara I do want to build up their friendship a little bit more because she needs to betray him so to make that hurt we need to build up the friendship yeah I just don't know how because I don't want to have like too many plot points on the road because then it becomes a road trip book but yeah I'm a little bit stuck because like other than them talking as they're riding horses to find this witch I'm not sure what else can happen without it derailing the plot and the other thing is they're out of their daily routines now because they've left Venice so it's not like the first act where one of the interesting things to play with is revealing all of this stuff through the course of their life you know their normal life before the world changes as part of the plot so I'm not really sure what to do here and because I'm not sure what to do here and I don't really want to skip ahead don't know if I'm going to do any more writing today but I did write something so that's still a win so I've been thinking about this next part of the book because I'm still not sure what should happen and one of the things I went back to was the hero's journey because this is where like the road of trial should be in Save the Cat it's like the fun and games section or the B story beginning it's always something I've struggled with just because you know you can say okay insert fun and games here insert trials here but you need to think of the trials so now I'm thinking about what the trials will be and I'm not sure if Keana already having to search for the clues is a trial or not just because she searches for the clues before she leaves her normal world which is Venice so she's already like triumphed over one question and now I'm like okay do I insert three trials while they're on the road and then there's also going to be like a decision she needs to make when she meets the witch so is that one of the trials or is that separate so I'm not really sure how many trials I need for this part of the book and if I put three is that going to feel like really cumbersome and like we're not getting anywhere because we've just spent however many thousand words running around Venice looking for clues and we're about to have a confrontation with the final trial so still stuck so I edited the rest of this video today and realized I did not film an outro so here is your outro thank you for watching I'm still very very far behind I hope your NaNoWriMo is going better than mine and if you enjoyed my suffering please like comment subscribe and do everything that'll keep the gods of YouTube happy bye