Where’d She Go?

What ho, what ho!

It has been longer than I realised or intended since we last sat down together, and I think it only fair to do you the courtesy of an explanation.

When I last posted, September was in full swing and I was running myself ragged trying to find a home (a literal, brick and mortar home). It was September when an offer was finally accepted on what was almost the last place I expected. Naively, I thought the process would get easier from there, but there were numerous back and forths with the solicitor (at least an hour on the bus each way, as I don’t drive) and work was busy in preparation for Christmas. Truth be told, I spent much of what little spare time I had asleep or sitting on buses wishing I was asleep as I struggled to scratch out a few words of my WIP.

As you may have surmised, it left no time to write blog posts and somehow the weeks slipped through my frustrated fingers. We finally moved at the end of November (but that was months ago, I hear you say!) and I was without internet until a couple of days before Christmas. Those disconnected weeks were pleasant in terms of productivity, but a nightmare for getting done all those other tasks one needs to do when moving house — most of which are done electronically. By then, lo and behold it was Christmas. January filled up with family difficulties and a vicious bout of lingering flu (I’m still coughing and snuffling) and here we are.

I’m still not sure where these five months disappeared to.

Writing-wise, it hasn’t been a total bust. I finished last year having written 94, 000 words, and though I was annoyed with myself for not hitting a pleasing 100k, I have to remind myself that circumstances weren’t ideal in the latter half of 2019.

30,000 of that was a novella that has recently morphed into The Rose Boys, 10,000 was a short story that became something of a Gothic fairy tale (read: nightmare), another 30,000(ish) was my untitled WIP, and the rest was a ragtag assortment of flash fiction and poetry.

In January, I only managed a paltry 10k, mostly my rewrite of Aurelius (now tentatively titled The Cult of Light), but if I can keep that up consistently, I should hit my 100,000 word goal this year, and finish the draft.

Which brings me to the point. I love blogging. I’ve been doing it for the last eight years, on and off for the first couple of years, but practically weekly since then. There’s something fun about the challenge of coming up with fresh, helpful content on a regular basis and I love engaging with the blogging community.

But I have books to write, and as I inch nearer to my hope of publication, I need to knuckle down and focus on getting those books done. I’ve thought a lot about my priorities in this respect, and I realise that though I love blogging, writing posts eats into time and creative juices I could be using to get my novels done and prepare them to go out into the world.

At the moment, I’m working on putting together a free course to launch my email list with. It will take time to get the email list up and running, and until then, I will be posting monthly, rather than weekly. Anything more than that is a bonus.

Disappointing as it is to be taking a step back from this, I’m excited about the progress I’m making on my novels (particularly The Rose Boys) and I hope it won’t be too long before I can share more with you.