A year or so of blogging
 |
| The ceramic frog keeps its glass eyes on possible intruders, ha ha ha. |
It was about one year ago that I returned to blogging about the writing. I can't recall why, perhaps related to getting That Which Can Be Remembered ready for publication. I had been out of the social media loop since the summer of 2018, after my mom died; I had no desire to do more than grieve, then move on, so blogging about the prose fell of the To Do list.
Four years later.... Back on the blogging track I went. Then a few months into it, I added my other side gig of quilting to the proceedings. And now a year has passed, full of drama, both fictional and non. Plenty of quilts, a good deal of gardening in 2022 and very little gardening in 2023. The photo above is how a planter looks now, fairly choked with weeds except for the section my husband cleared about a month or more ago. Last year I had heaps of flower seedlings planted there, not that many of them lasted, lol. Our exceedingly wet winter put the kabosh on my gardening instinct this season; I'll be happy to get the irises weeded before they bloom next month!
Yet the noveling has gone well so far this year, my series-in-the-making a true joy to write, which means so much to this author's heart. That heart was beat to crap last year as my brother-in-law battled cancer, then lost that fight in late January. Releasing my That Which Can Be Remembered (TWCBR) series was a thrill, but an attempt at NANOWRIMO in November bombed out. Lots of give and take in the past twelve months, both personally and in the hobby/career of writing, which is perhaps not exactly the best way to describe how I approach writing. It's a pastime but more. It's a game-changer in that right now with the prose flowing, I have been happier than I have felt in.... Well, more than a year.
Successful writing for me means writing almost daily a chapter per day. While I enjoyed crafting TWCBR, it didn't come as easily as the current novels are streaming. I wondered if age was catching up to my previous outputs, but that doesn't seem to be relevant now. And that's PRETTY DANG WONDERFUL, lol. I also realized a few nights ago that in writing The Hawk, perhaps I learned how to maintain a pace necessary for long sagas. I LOVED writing that novel, and again I'm in love with the writing. Woo. Hoo.
My vision for this blog, as well as my novels, is fairly simple; write, rinse, repeat. I always wanted to write books, and now having done so for over sixteen years, I'm absolutely content to Just Keep Writing. And that includes entries for this blog; I enjoy sharing my thoughts on writing, and other subjects when the mood arises. Quilting adds an intriguing element, in that writing is so solitary while quilting can be extremely visible, pretty complementary I think. As for the garden....
No guarantees that I'll have much more to show than assorted flowers once I get some seeds in the ground. My husband has Blue Lake pole beans and sugar snap peas recently planted, some new strawberries in the ground too. My outdoor goals are to get weeds pulled, then see what happens next.
As for the blog.... I try to post a few times a week. I don't keep a regular schedule, but then I'm not tied into specific story genres. I do what makes me happy, what relieves stress, what eases my soul. If these appeal to you, awesome! Let's spend this next year writing, sewing, pulling weeds, and reveling in the joy that emerges when one aligns their actions with their heart. Not much more needs to be said.
