I have been shockingly neglectful of everything to do with my writing this week, choosing instead to focus on being a mum and my personal mental health. I know I’ve been prioritising a lot of other things over my own health the last year or more, and while I want to share with you, the reader, all the wild and crazy fun of my imagination, I’ve also realized the struggle with my ADHD and the writing demands I’m putting on myself are just adding more stress add fuel to the fire. So, I’ve made the decision to rejig my schedule, ease off the expectations I have of myself, and just try and relax a bit.
Writing Mayhem
I did manage to get some writing done this week. A chapter each on Edge Gelus and Half-Life and most of a chapter of Cyra. Everything else sort of fell by the wayside. Even this blog update is late.
One way I will try to relieve some of the stress is to remove set expectations around non-scheduled WIPs. That means, Gelus and Cyra will stay priorities, but instead of demanding the muse and I focus on a specific WIP, I will back it up just to get words on the page for any of the WIPs I want to work on finishing this year. This will allow me to focus when needed and allow the Muse the flexibility to write where our mood takes us every other day.
Hopefully, that will lead to more words on the page and less stress. I’ve always worked with multiple WIPs simultaneously and find trying to force myself to write where my current mood is not engaged creates writer’s block and frustration.
Other Mischief
Wraith is out in the world. I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of it, and where you hope to see Angelis (book 3 in the series) go.
I’m currently designing and making ballgowns for Pxy and me in readiness for BABE. I’ll share photos of that as it progresses. I haven’t sewed a dress in over a decade, and it’s been about the same since I designed a pattern. This could be an absolute disaster, but I’m also looking forward to finishing it and being able to say, ‘I made this!’
I took Pxy to her first concert this week. She got tickets to Stray Kids for Christmas, and since I don’t mind the music, I went with her. It was a great night out, and I greatly respect the energy and life those young men bring to the stage. They had a live band to support them instead of prerecorded music, and the dance routines, while they sang, showed how fit they were (that and the regular shirt lift to show their abs).
Reading Mayhem
Still with my head firmly entrenched in fantasy for Escapism, my reads this week were:
Read
Dark Fae was a reread because I love Ryder and had to revisit it. I’ll probably continue to read through the series again over the next few weeks. But also wanted to knock off some books on my TBR, so picked up Savage Lands. It was different from what I expected, a little predictable, but a good read, and it has me picking up book 2 in the series to see where it goes from here.
I also read Wicked Haunting by Raven Woodward. I read that on my eReader so I don’t have it on my Goodreads read list yet.
Reading
I’m enjoying ACOTAR, and I’m not sure why I picked up two other books to read instead, but I guess I’ve done my usual thing these last few months with reading, and 30% of the way into the book, I just needed something else. (That something else was Ryder from Dark Fae—why am I such a sucker for the morally gray bad boys?)
Plans for this Week
As previously stated, there’s been a lot of interruption to my schedule as well as the Muse just not participating when I need her to, so I’ve rejigged my schedule so that while scheduled releases like Gelus stay focal, my main goal is just to get words on the page each day for at least one of the WIPs I’ve got on my 2023 priority list.
Have a great week!
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