As you might have guessed, April turned into a pretty hectic month. In order to keep up with things (and to keep my sanity), I had to put the blog on the back burner for a while.
But it’s a new month, and I’m turning over a new leaf; although, so far, the freelance editing & publishing biz is continuing to bring in a steady flow of work (incidentally, I’ve still got openings for May), which, while it’s something to be grateful for, it’s not leaving me a lot of room for non-paying projects.
Unfortunately, I had not only back-burnered both this blog and my nascent writing and publishing blog, but also any real attempt at trying to make any progress on my current novel. That simply cannot stand. I’ve got to make the novel a priority again, but in order to do so, something’s got to give, which is why, though I fully intend to start blogging consistently again, it’s going to be at a slower pace. So while I’m in the throes of drafting my novel, I’ll be aiming to post here at least once a week, as well as once a week at the other blog, although if work stays busy it may turn out to be twice a month over there.
And what about that novel? I’m talking about Ghost of a Chance, the sequel to Restless Spirits that I’ve already been writing off and on for the last six months or so. That might sound like it should be close to done, but I’m sorry to tell you otherwise. The short version is that I tried to pants it (seeing as how i pantsed Restless Spirits and that turned out just fine, albeit it’s also the only book I’ve ever successfully written without an outline) and it totally went off the rails. So I’ve had to go back to the drawing board and start over from the beginning with an outline.
Trouble is, finding time to sit and think about the story as a whole and break it down into a working outline has been harder than finding time to sit down and just write. I’ve got act one sorted out and pieced together, but there’s still a lot more to go.
I think another part of the problem is that there’s a murder mystery aspect to this one that keeps psyching me out. I’m not really big into the mystery genre, so I’m kind of afraid of botching it. It’s the B plot, but it’s integral to the main plot, so I can’t scrap it. I guess I’ll just have to muscle through and hope it doesn’t suck.
At any rate, this is setting my publishing schedule way, way behind. The first attempted draft isn’t a total loss, though. I should be able to salvage quite a few of those scenes, so that’s good news.
Besides getting my writing and blogging back on track, my other goals for the month of May include making more time for fun. These last few weeks I’ve been so bogged down with stuff I have to do or need to do that there hasn’t been nearly enough of doing stuff I simply want to do, which hasn’t made life very enjoyable. So I’m trying to work in more breaks just to play or doodle or daydream and just enjoy life. To that end, I’m also planning (read: hoping to be able) to take a long weekend around Memorial Day. It would be super-awesome if we could fit in a camping trip that weekend, but that’s not looking likely; still, if I have anything to say about it, that weekend is going to be devoted to fun and relaxation and to not even one iota of productivity.
I was also going to talk about the stuff I’ve been into during my scant amounts of free time lately, but this is already getting pretty long, so I’ll save that for next week’s post.
In the mean time, what about you guys? What have I missed? What are your plans for the merry month of May? Tell me all about it in the comments!
I should not be blogging right now. I should be editing my client’s book. But my client’s book (and all the edits I’ve done on it so far) live on Google Docs, which for the last couple of days has refused to let me access it. After sitting here fighting with it for literally the last two hours, I’ve managed to get it to let me download a copy (which will hopefully have all my edits and editing notes saved), and right now I’m downloading Apache OpenOffice, which I will attempt to install and run. I’m not actually sure this computer has enough available RAM to run it, which is why I didn’t just do that in the first place. At any rate, hopefully it will run and all of my edits and notes from GD will carry over and I can get back to work. Otherwise, all of my current freelance work will be stuck on hold until Google Docs gets its act together, which is not really an option, because deadlines.
So how’d I do? Eh, it could’ve been worse.
