Back to Work!

Welcome back friends! It has been a long summer.  I read 25 books, mostly recommended by my friends. Wrote when I could—though it was a lot less than I expected!—and created a lot of artsy stuff. The kids have been back at school for two days now and I hardly know what to do with myself! 

My ADHD brain works really well with structure. This summer? Not so much. I spent a lot of time staring at things. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block—I had plenty of ideas—but a lack of energy to get things on the page. Constant interruptions didn’t help. With historical fiction I can always switch to research, but with my current project not so much.  

Being aware helps. Knowing that my brain doesn’t feel well overstimulated and recognizing the signs helps. Being kind to myself helps. But so does getting the beloved distractions back to school. 

My goals for September include getting into a regular writing schedule. I’m solidly halfway through my current first draft with a hard (if sparse) outline for the rest and I’d really like to have a draft in the can by the time my residency rolls around in October. (I’ll be heading back down to Shelton for two weeks of intensive editing of book 3 in my series). 

I will be teaching two classes this fall. Middle School Storybuilding, and a LARPing great battles of History for 2^nd-5^th graders. The last was a toss in at the last second but I’m pretty pumped for it. I’m sure there is a joke about swords and pens in there somewhere. 

And of course we’ll be back to weekly Craft articles here on the blog. This month I’m going to talk a little about different genres and forms of novels and what it looks like to write those. After that? We’ll see…

I hope you all had a lovely summer and are pulling out those sweaters and giant coffee mugs. Happy Writing this week folks!