February in Canada can be tough. The days are slowly getting longer, but historically, its our coldest month, one last total freeze before we can start seeing life return. Worse, the sky here in Calgary tends to go grey with thick clouds that seem to never clear. The whole world feels like its holding its breath... which I suppose it is.
Spring will start to appear mid to late next month as the snow starts melting. That and the temperature rising to something above zero during the dark hours and higher daily highs along with the clouds finally starting to clear means that the trees start to stir slightly. We still won't see leaves until April, of course, but then we can see something happening at least.
But February... February feels like you're living in Bill Murray's Groundhog Day movie. Every day is cloudy, with little to no sun. The ground is covered with ice and snow that won't really change at all, day to day. Over the course of a week, you might see the roads clear, but that will be about it.
Add to this, working from home, when you're more likely to forget what day it is anyway, and February literally feels like somebody has pressed replay on the day for a month and they are very likely to continue to press it for the forseeable future.
So is this where I tell you I'm failing at everything? Strangely, no. I have one chapter to left to rewrite at this point and it isn't going to be from scratch. Its one chapter that needs a POV change. Aside from that, every chapter in the book needs minor tweaking to improve characterization and clear up the minor questions my editor noted for me. I should be able to do two or more chapters daily from this point on (aside from that single rewrite).
This doesn't mean I haven't felt like my energy is failing. I have. And I've dealt with it by getting myself interested in working on a short story about a set of Pathfinder characters that we stopped playing mid-2018. It was an evil campaign and I've been having fun figuring out which characters would have survived, which would have died and how the world looks like over 100 years in the future.
Now, I'll almost certainly never be able to do anything with it. Its a pit of depravity and immorality. It doesn't have anyone learning about the magical power of friendship and there are no life lessons to take home from it. Plus, it has lewd bits, which I enjoy writing, but will almost certainly never publish.
So what does writing this give me? Well, for one it lets me play around with a toy that I, essentially, can't break. This short story can be badly written, repetitive, playing with characters that I know, and I can figure out fun places to go with it. Those are all things that I can't do on Lord's Curse at this stage. Not without driving the story into the ground, at least.
Now, I can't ignore my work for this story, but I can work on it in between chapters. 200 words here, 300 there, no editing and only working on it when I have a moment of inspiration. It helps me feel like I have something fun to work toward and makes it so even editing and the dull February greys can't get me down.
What do you do to get yourself excited to work again during long projects?
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