Stagnation and the Writing Life

Hmmm, well, so much for staying on top of things here. I often find myself feeling like Alice, only rather than giving myself very good advice that I seldom follow I tell myself I'm going to keep up on things and then...well it's all that stagnation business. The whole reason I started this blog was to keep up with people while I traveled. These past four years, things just havne't gone that way. Hard to be a transient drifter when you spend all of your time in one place.

To say that owning your own business is a challenge would be the understatement of the past four years. To say that I have handled it well would also be deceiving. I've learned a lot, but still haven't found myself miraculously transformed into a business woman. Over the past six months, however, I've been pushing myself in another direction, and I actually feel like I've been making progress.

I've wanted to be an author pretty much forever. From "The Case of the Missing Dog" when I was six, to the classes I created for myself in High School to work on my novels, I've been longing to reach the point of publication. While all those glorious years of transience through Hong Kong and the Czech Republic benefited my soul, they also put off my writing, so it wasn't until November 2013 that I finally got that first book in print. Sadly, it's still in some state of disarray, because "the business" has taken up so much of my time and energy. However, in November 2015, I finally forced myself to really get back into the habit. I joined NaNoWriMo, and wrote a 50,000 word novella. I'm in the second round of edits right now, and hoping to have a completed copy available by the end of June. I also managed to join Camp NaNoWriMO in April, which helped me get the first draft of the second book in the Aristonia Chronicles finished. In the midst of this stagnant period hope slowly rises.

Through other creative outlets like Instagram, I have discovered the bookstagram community, as well as a plethora of other indie writers out there. It takes time to make connections, but I seem to be making some inroads. I am scheduled to do a blog hop to help promote the book of another writer, and I have been reading a back log of contemporary YA writers in an attempt to delve into the minds of the current YA reader. The opportunities are out there, now all I have to do is figure out how to make the most of them.

I'm hoping that, throughout this year, I will be able to connect here more often, and to share more about my writing process, as well as shed some light on what other writers are trying to accomplish. It's all in me, now let's just see if I can get it on the page :)