Books on my bedside table. As well as my Kindle, spiky ball for self massage and evidence of the latest respiratory infection.
I’ve been away from blogging for a while. I’m not really certain why, to be honest – maybe it’s just pure burnout on the whole act of blogging.
Possibly related, I’ve also moved away from keeping wordcounts over the last few months. Just as an experiment – the scientist in me cannot accept just doing something because everyone (or anyone) says that you should.
And, as a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time pretty much just meandering. I’ve done some work editing a few short stories, and submitted one for hopeful publication. I need to finish editing the second one and submit that, as well. I really hope that I can sell these two – they’re interlinked stories set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world (because why not?) and I have plans for a novel following them as well. Because apparently I don’t ever write standalone short stories.
I’ve been doing some writing not intended for publication as well – just stuff for the pure fun of it, which has actually been really enjoyable, and shown me a few things about what I like to write. And reminded me that I do love to write, which is important. This year has kind of been hell, health-wise, and I’ve found it difficult to settle down to any kind of decent novel writing. I’m hoping that next year will get a little easier, since my son will be in kindy two days a week (increasing to three days in the latter half of the year).
And because sometimes the universe is awesome and tosses a really great thing in your path, I watched a documentary – The Wildest Dream – and have subsequently gotten kind of obsessed with the whole idea of high altitude mountaineering. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go and start scaling the Eiger (but hell, I wouldn’t mind trekking to Everest Base Camp sometime in my life), but I have an awesome idea for a short story which may become a novella which may become a novel.
I do want to start making myself accountable again for my work, and am planning to try to start blogging at least weekly again. I’m thinking about what I want to do with some of the other novels I’ve been working on for way too long, and I have to start kicking myself in the butt to get the work done. Which means that you will start seeing word counts posted again (probably on a weekly basis).
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