You might notice there have been a few changes to my website. If you’re wondering why I mentioned my reasons in a previous blog post for moving my website from Squarespace to a WordPress.org self-hosted website.

In that post I also mentioned how we hoped to be moving in June. Well, here is it October and we’re still in the same here. We did manage to sell one house and are currently doing renovation on this one so we can hopefully have a better chance of selling it quickly. As soon as we put it on the market again we’re leaving. We really want to be out of here before the holidays. We would really like to spend the holiday season in the new location.

At the beginning of October I did something I’ve been wanting to do for years and years. I got surgery to correct my vision. It was scary for me—not the surgery but the going into public—since it was my time going into a public building since February. With my medical condition I’m in the high risk category for Covid-19, so Hubby and I are being extra careful. But my eye doctor has some great safety measures in place and when I expressed my concerns, they were sure to be extra careful with me. So I now have 20/15 vision, something I never thought I’d say. I’ve worn glasses since second grade and contacts since sixth. Even with corrective lens I was never able to see as well as I do now. I really wish I would have gotten it done years ago.

Writing has been hit-and-miss with everything else that’s going on in my life at the moment. I’ve currently got three different books more than halfway written but can’t seem to get past the halfway point with any of them. Part of the trouble is having my attention pulled in a lot of other directions at the moment, less time to write, and just overwhelm from all that’s going on in the world. I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing lately. I’ve reread some old favorites and found some new-to-me authors I’ve really enjoyed.

For me writing is something I have to be in the right frame of mind to do. Sometimes is super easy to get into the zone. Other times the zone is impossible to even see for all the other things cluttering my mind. Lately it’s been a lot more of the latter than the former. When I have large to-do lists I often feel like taking an hour to two to write is the last thing I should be doing. So even when I do manage to carve out a little time to write, I often find my brain refuses to stop thinking about the million and one things I need to do.

As a writer, finding your own process is importing. Knowing what works and doesn’t work for you is essential to writing book after book. Even if that process changes with each one, knowing when to change is also part of being a writer. Me? I know I need a consistent block of time to allow myself to reread what I’ve written before and fall back into the story. The longer I can ignore the world around me and write, the better. I don’t write every day, but on days I do write I write for anywhere from four to ten hours straight. Some books can be written in a few long, hard writing days, with the words just flowing out of my fingers. Others, they end up being pieced together a few hundred words at a time over months or even years.

I also know I need some sort of routine in order to write. Right now, routine is the last thing I have. Every day is different. Some days what we’re doing depends on the weather. Other days it depends on whether or not we can get what we need from the store or if we have to order it and wait for it to be shipped to us. The lack of any sort of routine isn’t conducive to me getting a lot of writing done. That doesn’t mean I’m not trying to write. This blog post is proof of that.

Some days just writing a paragraph feels like an accomplishment of epic proportions. Other days it’s just a drop in the bucket. I’m learning to celebrate those small victories as well as the big ones.