Well, here we are again, after another long hiatus. I planned on doing a writing update every month, but as usual, life got in the way. But, I’m happy to say, so did writing! Much better to actually write than write about writing.
It looks like I haven’t done one of these since December 1, and since then I had a pretty good run of short story publications. If you haven’t checked them out already, I’d be grateful if you did so.
- “The need to apologize in advance” was published in Lit. 202
- “Penance” was published in The Courtship of Winds
- “Settling in for the Night” was published in Failbetter
- “The Table” was published in Prairie Light Review
In addition, in early February I decided to launch my own Etsy shop focusing on vintage books, called Lost Generation Books, a nod to my favorite era of writing and writers. If you’re in the market for rare and vintage books, come check us out!
One reason I haven’t been on here more often, is something that I wrote about back in February – I spent over a month being barely able to speak, and barely able to eat solid foods. After a number of doctors and procedures, I still have no solid answers, making me think it was another result of extreme stress/trauma. The mainstream Western medical establishment, however, won’t even listen to that as a possibility, let alone accept it as reality. Which leaves me where I’ve been through all my health issues these last several years, pretty much on my own. But I digress.
Back on the writing front I’ve been busy, completing several more short stories, while continuing to submit previously finished ones to literary journals – doing my best to have as many irons in the fire as possible! I’m doing the final run-through on my complete reworking of my first novel, and should have that finished in the near future, then will be able to send it out to agents. Plus, just yesterday I began playing around with some ideas for a female protagonist, and within a few hours had morphed into what I believe will become the outline for my third novel. It just started to flow from my pen in a way that I haven’t had in many years, and as any writer will know that is a form of magic.
Pfew, writing it all out sounds like I’ve been doing more than I thought! And I guess that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do these posts – it’s so easy to get fixated on how much your NOT doing that you lose sight of just how much you are accomplishing. You never know which piece is the one which is going to get attention, and potentially get you to that next level, so you just have to keep working on it.
Fellow writers, what are you working on right now? What are you stuck on? What’s inspiring you?
Words will keep us together 
I like this quote I just saw, and it says that having down moments in your creative journey is part of the process. So whenever I’m in a rut, I just remind myself that it’s all part of the game. Anyway, thanks for this post!
You are absolutely right! Those moments are necessary to refill the well, as it were, but it’s so easy to forget that when you have so many ideas you want to run with. Like everything in life, by slowing down and doing less, we end up doing more and with greater depth 🙂