Happy May, everybody. I must confess that spring is my favorite time of year. Everything is getting green and seeds are sprouting in the garden. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen pictures of my flowers. I’m even making inroads on the dandelions in my lawn. That’s thanks to the way I’m reshaping my schedule. It’s been a month and a half since I was ordered to stay home, so there’s no more excuse to act like I’m still confused.
Basically, I try to alternate my activities and keep myself alert. First thing in the morning, I take care of dishes and other chores. Then I get online, check work e-mail and sign into Teams. If my supervisor has any tasks for me, that’s where I’ll find them. Between 10 and 11, I go outside and do yard work. (The aforementioned dandelion patrol.) Around noon, I stop for lunch and play video games. Then at 1 pm it’s back online for a Zoom meeting. After the meeting, I do my first batch of writing for the day. That ends between 3 and 4, when I have more time for video games. If it’s my turn to cook, I get dinner handled. Then back upstairs for more writing until about 9.
Currently, I’m back to work on Prisoners of the Wailing Tower. Part of the reason I stopped was because I felt like I was on the wrong track. This is normal, since I don’t work with outlines. While I focused on the self-publishing part for Ice Witch, I kept mulling that over. I figured out where I went wrong and things are re-arranged. My normal goal has been to write 1 page a day (500 words, since I draft my stories single-spaced). With 2 sessions, that pushes me to 1,000 words a day.
Other ongoing projects are the pre-publicity for Ice Witch and inviting more people to join in on Queen Titania’s Court. The response has been fairly lack-luster, I must sadly admit. Maybe I’ll fill the extra spots with characters from my other books. Why not! Another project is Writers Read Writers, spear-headed by author Alma Alexander. A group of us are reading each other’s stories, and Alma is putting it out as a podcast. It should be fun, and of course I’ll let you know when my own story goes up.
At the moment, my video games are Animal Crossing and Control. Animal Crossing has saved my sanity during the pandemic, let me tell you. Control is a new one to me. It’s a fairly tense game with weird sound effects and alien monsters lurking in an apparently-abandoned office building. So far I’m really enjoying it, but I am glad I waited. I needed to be less tense before I started playing a tense game.
So that’s it! I hope you’re all holding your ground and staying safe.
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