Today marks the last full day of writing time before my kids are home for summer break, and I thought I would use it to update my sorely neglected blog.
It has been nearly eight months since my last post - which is embarrassing, considering so many of my writer friends post every day. I haven't quite figured out how to juggle the household, the kids, and the millions of extra stuff that comes up, with my writing, my research, my agent/editor queries, and my blog. How do you all manage it?
During my blog silence, I finished a major overhaul of my novel. It was a huge undertaking. I switched the POV from third to first, cut 18,000 words, and pulled a few plot threads, which meant some tedious re-plotting of things. The actual overhaul took about three months of thinking about the changes, and six months of actually making those changes. Once the hardcore writing began, I couldn't focus on a blog or anything else beyond my household. In fact, every day, I fought hard to come out of the catatonic, zombie-state I found myself in after writing before the kids came home. (Is that normal? Anyone else get that way? I forced myself to walk - it helps!)
How DO you all do it? I thought my 7 am to 2 pm, five days a week schedule devoted to writing was pretty good - so many of my writer friends work outside of the home and complain they never have time to write - but I see people writing books and blogging, doing author visits, etc. and I wonder - HOW?
I stressed about not blogging for a while. Every time I would go to my critique meetings with my AWESOME writer's group and saw Jacqui and Diane, the champion bloggers in my group, I'd feel inadequate in my ability to juggle stuff. But I have realized that I have a sort of writing cycle that works for me. I blog when I am in the thinking stages of a work - when I am doing research, or plotting, or trying on character voices - this is usually during the summer months and early fall when the kids are home or just getting settled into the new school year and so much 'stuff' is going on. Then, right about October/November, I hit my hardcore writing groove, and nothing but that novel gets written because I have a goal - to finish in May before the insanity that is the end of the school year begins. With summer comes a new project, more thinking than writing, and, therefore, more blogging.
Probably not industry standards, and if I get published, I will probably need to change that because I will need to have a more regular blog - but for now? It works for me.
So, here's to summer days, reading books, writing blogs, and just plain hanging out while characters run rampant in my head (I love that part).
Cheers!
