Too long…
I’ve been toying with writing this post for the past several hours. Every time I went to click “Add New Post,” I instead found something shiny to completely distract me from just sitting down and writing this out. If I’m truly being honest, though, I’ve been meaning to write this post for over a week, now. Instead, I decided that my facebook games needed attention. Or I needed to research some mundane piece of information that mattered to no one (including me). Or I needed to watch some inane TV show (I’ve become obsessed with Chopped, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Holmes on Homes and Work of Art: Search for the Next Great Artist… and I’m purposely not linking to any of them right now because I know the second I go searching for their links, I’ll get sucked in and find another distraction from this post).
I have no idea why it was so hard to finally sit down to write this post… but here it is.
I admit – it’s been sad to see that my intent to blog daily was so completely tossed by the wayside so early on. It was also naive of me to think that this year was a good year to set that goal. When I think of the life I was living back when I made that goal, it seems like it’s a world away… Both literally and figuratively.
Shortly after the radio silence, were my last two weeks at my job. They were a complete blur – not only was there the normal craziness of registration, but I need to resolve all of my outstanding issues, completely train the girl who would be replacing me and make a list of everything I normally do (and how I do it) so that there was some form of reference they could use after I had left. I honestly can’t remember those two weeks or how I got through them.
Immediately following my last day at work, my inlaws came to visit for two weeks. Because I was so worn out by the process of leaving my job, I took the two-week vacation as just that – a VACATION! We had fun, we did touristy things and we relaxed completely.
After that… well… more than just blogging fell by the wayside. I have to admit, a little bit of depression and trepidation about the move we were getting ready to make. That was such an emotional roller coaster – plans about where I would live changed a million time. Arguments between Jim and I about long-standing, pent-up issues began springing up as the stress of The Unknown descended upon us. Temper tantrums (amazingly, not just mine – Jim had a few of his own, too) were numerous. And then there was all the minutiae that goes into physically moving after 10 years across an ocean with three pets.
We were essentially homeless for a over a month – shacking up with relatives and friends when we weren’t in a hotel. We finally moved into our new home early June – and the very next day, Jim left for a deployment.
Basically, this move was difficult and it’s taken me a month to get my bearings and my head on straight enough to sit down and write.
This all sounds like excuses, and maybe it is… but I can’t change the choices I made to not blog – to not fulfill my New Year’s Resolution. The person who made that resolution lives in a vastly different world than I live in now. It honestly feels weird to look back and see the hope I had at the beginning of this year. What the hell was I thinking?
Anyway – this post is sounding all down and hopeless… and while I’ll admit, I’ve long since lost the bright, bushy-tailed enthusiasm for the adventure this year seemed to promise, I’ve not lost the focus to get this Untitled Sci-Fi/Fantasy Project finished.
During the month of transience, I picked up Book in a Month by Victoria Lynn Schmidt and How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. Both of them have been invaluable in helping me weed through a lot of my issues with this story. BIAM sounds like a gimmicky waste of money, but believe me, there is substance in there. Obviously, there’s no way I’m going to finish writing the entire project in 30-days, but using the techniques listed in this book, I should be able to have a very bare-bones 1st draft of Part 1 done at the end of a month.
I have some ground-work to finish before I begin my 30 days – Schmidt includes a lot of work sheets and questions to answer before the writing starts… and I have to admit, she asks a bunch of questions that I honestly couldn’t come up with an answer for. Good questions. Questions that I should probably know about my story before I start trying to write it.
So, blogging is back on. I don’t know if it will be daily or not. I don’t know what exactly I’ll be blogging. I just know it’s time to dust this thing off and get going again. It’s long overdue.
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