New Years Update

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Apologies to those who’ve watched me disappear from this blog. I won’t list all my excuses here, but I’m glad to be able to say, with some bitter-sweetness, that I’ve restarted the series that proceed The Red Forest. It’s lacking a title, but I began it in November for NaNoWriMo and reached about 51k words, which, coincidentally, is the approximate word count I’ve reached so far in Parallax. That project has been in hiatus since summer of ’11.

Here’s to a new year, yes? I hope to at least complete one of those novels I’m working on, because I have a third story that’s been lulling around in my mind for the past two months. I must admit, new story ideas don’t come to me extremely often, but when they do, I let it simmer in my mind for a while. Sort of like a test for strength, if you will. Am I the only one who makes “deals” and “conditions” with themselves? I told myself I won’t begin this new story until I finish at least one of my novels-in-progress.

The new story? It seems, at the moment, to be in the SF/F genre, parallel or alternate universes and such… multi-dimensional, that sort of thing. And all that inspired me was a four minute cut scene from a video game preview. From that video, a cascade of ideas and characters assaulted me, and it’s stood the test of time because I’m still thinking about it. But I must complete the first draft of one current novel first!

Otherwise, life’s been busy and I don’t get half as much free time as I’d like to write (or paint). I have a part-time job, I have two consistent commissions for a website and illustrations for a friend’s writing project, and I’m also homeschooling my kindergartner as well as doing all the other things a mother and wife does. Feeling very unproductive as of now! But I apologize, I said I wouldn’t explain [all of my] excuses. I’ve been reading a lot too, there were some winners and losers in my reading list, but the good certainly outweigh the bad. My past reading list is here, and I successfully completed my goal of reading at least forty books in 2011!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holidays. Anyone make some New Year’s writing, or otherwise creative, resolutions for 2012? I have an inkling it will be a most interesting year.

5 responses to “New Years Update”

  1. Didn’t know you were a homeschooler – I did our three through the end of high school. They turned out fine.

    That said, I remember those years as not being kind to a writer with CFS. Occasionally, I’d get or grab a chunk of time. If the story of Pride’s Children hadn’t been so compelling that it stayed in the background all those years, filling notebook after notebook, and I hadn’t used my writing partner as a prompt (we’d get together and exchange pages at lunch about once a month), there wouldn’t have been a book published finally last fall.

    Try that kind of break in a lot of other fields – it won’t work. But writing…

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    • Like many arts, writing is so versatile. I hadn’t written much of anything at all when my girls were infants, but there was always a story or two brewing in the back of my mind. When a story stays with you that long, it’s a keeper! I’m happy to hear that after all these years, your story has finally blossomed!

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