It’s been… more than a long time since I’ve updated my blog. Granted, to be fair, it’s been more than a long time since I worked on anything original too. I was able to win NaNoWriMo last year, adding 50K words to my WIP, which helped me come closer to finishing it by a ton. It got my main character through two of her four tasks, and set her up for the third pretty well. And then the Holidays hit. Because of everything that goes on at my house for Holidays, I didn’t really allow myself time to write. And that is on me, no excuses that I was too busy, I just didn’t carve out the appropriate amount of time to let myself when I should have. Couple the Holidays with my 9-5 job that pays the bills from December to February due to a deadline that came due, and my writing suffered more than I wanted to.
February was the worst month though. I lost my father on February 5th unexpectedly. And it’s been hard, getting through, helping my Mom through. Trying to make sure everything goes as it needs to, or where it needs to. On top of that, we had a whole business (he had a self-owned business) to try and figure out, inventory, and get up and running in the wake of his absence. And truthfully, I’ve been low enough that trying to write original stuff has been really hard, trying to focus and keep going where I was. For the first month or so, I had a really hard time writing in past tense at all, and while some people might be saying then don’t write in past tense, my WIP – all 100+ pages already written – is in past tense. So it made working on it near impossible when I kept slipping into first person. And for a while I felt like everything I wrote period was coming out pretty crap.
Knowing myself, I knew that for the good of the novel, it was better to not touch it until I was in a more stable place. Because especially when low I can be one of those temperamental artists that turns around and just scraps everything in a fit if I’m not careful. I haven’t had a fit like that in a while, a long while, but that’s partially because I’ve learned from my past, learned the signs that it was coming on, and learned to put some space between me and whatever it is I’m working on to better keep things whole and ready for me when I come back from my low.
I think I’m about ready to start trying to finish my novel now though. To start working on original ideas again. I’ve been getting some new original ideas recently, ones that give me that small smile because they just scream ‘write me’ loudly and start creating their own main character so I can work on them. But, I’ve been trying to be good, to not start another project before I finish this novel. It’s been put off, re-drafted, re-written, too many times to put it on the side burner for a new idea after everything. And I really do want to get there, to feel that sigh of relief that the first draft can officially be called finished. Maybe start a new project while I give it some space before going back to edit it and have my trusty editor help to comb through it, make sure it’s as good as it can be. And I’m ready to get back into this blog, to writing even if it’s here to keep up being active again.
