At it again!

IMG_0413I took the last half of December off to hang out with family and play. And catch up on my sleep. And I got some reading done. And I slept in nearly every day of my daughter’s winter break.

But enough of that. School’s back in session, buses must be caught. So, I’m back to getting up at 6:30AM and being awake in the morning. And writing.

I was less than pleased with my output for last year. I finished, and published 17 pieces of fiction. Which was fabulous. Although I was aiming for 25. I could have hit my goal, if I hadn’t lost 2-3 months working on a novel which died. Rather my interest in it died. The story went sideways and became absolutely and totally uninteresting to me. Not worth the effort to finish it. That hasn’t happened in years and years. So, there I was with a dead story and I kept working on it, unwilling to give up. The two weeks off in December cleared my mind enough so that I could see the problem and just let the novel go. I may or may not reuse the characters in something else. But I’m done trying to make that story work for me. And it has to work for me.

So, at the moment, I’m finishing up a group of short stories that have been floating around in my mind for months now. And this year I’ve decided on a different goal. I’m going to try to write every day. That’s a real challenge for me. There’s very little that I’ve done every day of my life. I have breathed, although during an asthma attack even that feels iffy. I used to fast occasionally, so I haven’t eaten every day. I used to pull all nighters, so I haven’t slept every day of my life. I’ve probably drank liquids every day.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m betting that my word count will be higher at least. It wasn’t what I thought it should be for last year. It felt lower than the year before, but then I’ve never added it up before, so who knows. But I’m determined to write more this year and not have long stretches between writing. So far so good. I’ve already finished one story and am deep inside another one.

And apparently this is my year for learning new software. Apple updated the word processing program I use. And they removed the ability to make a linkable table of contents. Which is absolutely essential for ebooks. They also added a bit of proprietary stuff which made one of my vendors kick the ebook back to me. So, I’m having to switch everything around. Not the software I was hoping to learn. I wanted to start the year learning a different program for making paper books. Oh well, another mountainous learning curve on the way!

In other news, I’m going to try and get out to work in the garden more this year. It’s been frozen lately, but today it’s raining and thawing out. My orange witch hazel is in full bloom and perfuming the garden. I’d include a photo but it’s so dark out there today to take photos. Hellebores are beginning to open and progress is being made on the patio. Small progress, but there’s hope it may get finished in my lifetime.

That about covers the changes in my new year’s resolutions. And now it’s time to get to my writing. Off to the Mediterranean today, where it’s warm and sunny!



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