Where Have I Been?

A little update on what’s been going on in my life and how that’s affected my writing…

I don’t usually struggle terribly with writer’s block, but 2020 hit me like a ton of bricks. The words dried up for me about the time people started tearing into each other over current events. I tried to maintain a healthy stance on things and neither discount concerns or stress unduly, but despite my best efforts, there was enough background stress and a lingering sadness over how people were behaving I just… couldn’t write. All the creativity was gone– poof!

I did find I could still paint for whatever reason. Playing with that helped keep me sane.

I also found myself dealing with worsening health. I have a somewhat rare autoimmune disease that effects my day-to-day quality of life pretty significantly. And I’m not convinced I’ve been fully diagnosed, much less treated, so it’s been a challenge.

That definitely messed with my writing plans. Hard to write with brain fog and migraines, ya know?

Oh, and let’s not forget my kiddos are older and don’t take a 2-hour long nap every day. (That’s how my Shallows series got written… making use of naptimes!)

A good thing and an unexpected contributor to the lack of writing… my web & graphic design business picking up. I have less time for writing, but it definitely pays better. And for a while, it was using the very limited amount of energy and creativity I had left.

Now that I have a bit more creativity bandwidth to work with and it’s not so finite, I feel like I can fit in some writing. I want you to read along with me (if you don’t mind typos and other first-draft fun) here.