I Skipped a Week. You Might Have Noticed. Or Not.

What do you call a writer who is not writing?

That’s not a riddle, but more a rhetorical question. The reason I ask is that I missed writing a post last week, and postponed this week’s until today, and only because I have a veritable dearth of ideas that require memorialization in written form.

I’ve previously written a blog post without an idea, and though it turned out rather well (and having just re-read it, I’m pretty proud of it), but I can’t do that every week. You don’t want that. Trust me on this.

So, no blog post last week, and whatever this turns out to be this week. Have I been working on anything else?

Well…sort of?

You all might recall that my life blew up in spectacular fashion near the end of NaNoWriMo, and if you didn’t know, now you do. I finished NaNoWriMo’s fifty thousand words, because writing that story gave me an escape from the shitshow that was swirling around me. But after it was over, I didn’t know what to do next.

I mean, I did. I knew I was going to tackle my next project–a novel that has been kinda finished for awhile, but has a terribly fucked up timeline and a load of other problems with plot and characterization. You know, novel stuff. But it took me until mid-January to actually get started on rewriting it.

And it’s going…okay. I’ve set a one thousand word goal for the days I work on it. I haven’t hit it yet, but I keep trying. And that’s something.

On the upside (and I’ve tried very hard to always find an upside), I have many kind friends who come to hang out with me while my daughter is at work to keep me company and bug me to write. Some of them bring food. I have selected an emotional support movie (Mad Max: Fury Road. I don’t know why. Don’t judge) and have watched it…more times than I want to admit. I am immensely grateful for the friends who don’t come to sit around with me, but check on me. And I’m grateful for my friend who talks to me (though infrequently) like everything hasn’t fallen apart, because though everything is different, I’m not. Mostly.

Do what makes you happy. I’m working on rediscovering those things for myself.