I’m Still Here

Yes, I missed a few posts (three, to be exact) but I’m still here.

Let’s see… I missed Friday’s post because… Well, because… Let’s see.

I validated NaNoWriMo on Thursday. It wasn’t a pretty win, and the story is a long way from finished but I hit 50K.  Then I started working on Friday’s blog post but didn’t finish it. (I was kinda sick of the computer and Word at the time.)

Friday was a little chaotic. Jazzy, our 13 year old Boxer had surgery to remove a mole that had changed and that she had scratched at and got infected, as well as a mast cell tumor on her hind leg (malignant but not life-ending). She had to be there between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning and we picked her up a little after 2:00 that afternoon. Then my roommate went to work and I stayed downstairs to keep an eye on her. (She pretty much slept the rest of the day but our male Boxer wouldn’t let me stay up in my room with her down there alone.) So, everything else pretty much took a back seat to dog needs on Friday, and no Friday blog post got done, and I also didn’t schedule a snippet for Rainbow Snippets.

Saturday someone was supposed to come and re-route the pipes to the kitchen sink so they don’t freeze up in the winter. So I was up early to get laundry done before we shut off the water main, cleaned the kitchen, moved half of the stuff out of where it belongs so he could access the places he needed to get to… And he canceled.

(I’m actually glad he canceled. Jazzy was still out of it (although she looked a lot less “stoned” than she did on Friday) and she wants to “help” with whatever project you’re doing and the last thing we need is for her to pull her stitches out running up and down the steps fifty times.)

My roommate picked up an extra half-shift for Saturday and Sunday, so I spent Saturday evening downstairs with the dogs as well, although Jazzy slept all evening (she never left the couch from the time she left until she got home), and Riley, who wouldn’t let me stay upstairs on Friday kept fussing for me to go upstairs on Saturday. But anyhow, I didn’t get a Sunday Snippet scheduled either.

Then a fair amount of Sunday was spent catching up on three weeks of Rainbow Snippets blog hops that I didn’t do because of NaNoWriMo. (I didn’t quite make it but I’m hoping to get them finished this afternoon.)

But, frustrating though it has been, there is something of a bright side to all the non-computer time. It’s given me time to think about my writing and what I want to focus on now that NaNoWriMo is over.

There are so many things I should be doing: Onxy Sun, Song and Sight, The Other Mages trilogy, a hundred or so other WiPs…

But I realized where my heart is, and that is with The Academy of the Accord. If I want to release it in 2020 I’d better get busy on it. I still have to finish writing the prequel (my NaNoWriMo project) and Book 5.5 (which will be Book 6 when I get everything renumbered).  I’ve done the first round paper edits on all of the other books, and I think that the next one up for entering changes from those edits is Book 5, which means I have eight finished first drafts to enter changes on. (And some are a lot worse than others.) Also, I really can’t do much with two of the books after Book 5 because Book 5.5 is taking parts of them. (I’m going to cry now.)

I don’t think I’m setting any actual goals for this month – maybe to enter the changes to Book 5 – but I will be focusing on The Academy of the Accord, at least for the foreseeable future. I might poke at adding bits and pieces to Onyx Sun or Song and Sight or something else if I feel the urge, but most of my focus will be with the never-ending series.

I’m sure I’ll get burned out on it and need to take a break to do something else. It’s awesome to have other projects waiting for me when that happens.