Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it

Books on my bedside table.  As well as my Kindle, spiky ball for self massage and evidence of the latest respiratory infection.

I’ve been away from blogging for a while.  I’m not really certain why, to be honest – maybe it’s just pure burnout on the whole act of blogging.

Possibly related, I’ve also moved away from keeping wordcounts over the last few months.  Just as an experiment – the scientist in me cannot accept just doing something because everyone (or anyone) says that you should.

And, as a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time pretty much just meandering.  I’ve done some work editing a few short stories, and submitted one for hopeful publication.  I need to finish editing the second one and submit that, as well.  I really hope that I can sell these two – they’re interlinked stories set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world (because why not?) and I have plans for a novel following them as well.  Because apparently I don’t ever write standalone short stories.

I’ve been doing some writing not intended for publication as well – just stuff for the pure fun of it, which has actually been really enjoyable, and shown me a few things about what I like to write.  And reminded me that I do love to write, which is important.  This year has kind of been hell, health-wise, and I’ve found it difficult to settle down to any kind of decent novel writing.  I’m hoping that next year will get a little easier, since my son will be in kindy two days a week (increasing to three days in the latter half of the year).

And because sometimes the universe is awesome and tosses a really great thing in your path, I watched a documentary – The Wildest Dream – and have subsequently gotten kind of obsessed with the whole idea of high altitude mountaineering.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to go and start scaling the Eiger (but hell, I wouldn’t mind trekking to Everest Base Camp sometime in my life), but I have an awesome idea for a short story which may become a novella which may become a novel.

I do want to start making myself accountable again for my work, and am planning to try to start blogging at least weekly again.  I’m thinking about what I want to do with some of the other novels I’ve been working on for way too long, and I have to start kicking myself in the butt to get the work done.  Which means that you will start seeing word counts posted again (probably on a weekly basis).

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.