A quarter through the year, we’re due for an update, aren’t we?

Life outside of writing grew quite hectic these last two months. I thought I was a book or two behind on my writing goals, but then I calculated and realized I’m only about a quarter of a draft behind. Project shifting enabled most of this progress, a “luxury” I can use while unpublished. Here’s what’s been going on:

Writing

• Yelronpe and the Markleflips is now on the back-most burner as promised. Don’t expect to hear much, if anything, about it for a long time. I loved finally recording the story, but more so I loved getting a complete novel down in handwritten form—”it’s been too long” and I look forward to utilizing said format more often.
• The Bluestone series continues to flirt with me. I toyed thoroughly with a few different formats, and while each one works well, most rob the series of the story I want to tell (especially an emo teen version that wrote surprisingly well). I think I have found a format perfect for the story (crosses fingers, knocks on wood, throws salt over my shoulder), but it’s an evolving one that may still encounter many hiccups along the way. At the end of the day, I think I’m finally writing the story I want to tell, and that’s what’s important. Sometimes writing takes off best when it’s simmering rather than when it’s on the hot plate.
• Frustration with the Bluestone series carried over to Imagine. It made me do a lot of that whole soul-searching “I’m not good enough to be an author” imposter syndrome stuff that even famous people like Neil Gaiman struggle with. Rather than give in to those thoughts, I postponed any work whatsoever on Imagine. The last couple of days I began to shift back toward it, however.
• “Darkness”—now “When the World Grows Dark”—proved irresistible. Not in my 2019 plans, I plowed into this story full force, WHAM! like a battering ram. I got about a third of the way through in record time before it became resistible. Which would not have happened had I not let life interrupt my writing powerhouse (for a COUPLE of days! 2 days!). I love the story, and I wrote mixing between handwritten and typed (which let me use the personally super-successful method of revising as I create), but the wind has finally fallen out of these sails. It should only take a good, uninterrupted day or two (or week would be nice) to sit down and focus wholeheartedly on the book in order to get back on track (or even complete the book), but writing small snippets here and there does not work on this novel. In summary:  love the idea, love the story, need mojo.
• And according to schedule, I should be working on my M.G. issues book. At the start of April I returned to it. If you remember January, I experienced a three-day super-spree in which I spewed forth much of the story. MG issues book is far ahead of schedule, but three out of four stories listed above are also vying for my attention.  Glad I scheduled so much time for this book!

Pet Projects

• Chapter per Week is treading water. Which means I post chapters weekly but have done nothing more to the test site. I don’t even know stats, but at least it works…
• Poets Pseudonymous is floundering. I’ll get to it eventually. I continue to brainstorm the idea (including higher pay for submissions) because I like it, but for now I’m focused elsewhere.

Lessons Learned?

Yep. One major one. I need to practice juggling more often. Writer’s juggling—the kind that says full focus should not always go to one novel/rewrite/outline/blog post/writer idea. Because I’m terrible at that kind of juggling. Like horrendous. Apocalyptically pathetic at it. But I’ve also noticed that if I have at least something to occasionally steal my attention, I’m less likely to burn my “current project.” This year I’ve gained a lot of practice, and now I actually schedule in the occasional side project.

Life

“None of your beeswax”—the saying doesn’t even make logical sense, but still…

Anyway

Yep, I’m learning to juggle, just not the physical kind. I’m a few steps behind but getting back on track. Life’s good