Fire Star Press: perspective

I'm a slow writer at the best of times. I'm in awe of authors who churn out multiple books a year. I will never be in their ranks. Most of the time I'm okay with that. Right now it's a bit of a struggle.

I began the year with big plans:

✓ Revise and submit Saved by the Belle (It was published by Fire Star Press on Aug 8th.)

✓ Complete and publish the next entry in my Paws and Effect series (It's Meow or Never was published in February.)

__ Complete and submit Dances with Werewolves, the next full-length novel in my Kudzu Korners series

__ Complete Something Whiskered This Way Comes, the 3rd entry in my Paws and Effect series, and submit it to the Kindle Worlds program

__ Use National Novel Writing Month in November to write a rough draft of my first inspirational romance, Finding Faith

As you can see, I only have two of the items on my list checked off. And, I'm struggling a bit with that. You know from some of my earlier posts that my mom passed away earlier this year. For me, grief and writing were not a good mix.

About the time I started getting my writing groove back, we decided to start looking at houses. My husband and I both grew up in the country (some would say the boonies) and we wanted to get back to a rural environment. Almost every evening after work was spent driving endless miles looking at what seemed like hundreds of houses. As exhausting as it was, the process was totally worth it. We closed on our new house at the end of July and moved in the first weekend in August. The past six (eight?) weeks have been filled with a plethora of boxes (packing and unpacking) and next to no writing. As a matter of fact, this post and a post for my personal blog are the only things I've written in the past couple of months. But hey, it's a start!

Our new house, aka The Cabin

I'm the queen of beating myself up over things both big and small and it would be easy to get discouraged about the lack of progress I've made this year. But, in my ongoing effort to stop being so hard on myself, I'm choosing to look at things from a different perspective. I have six published stories - six. That's not too shabby for someone who, a decade ago, wouldn't even have dreamed of being a published author. Take that, negativity!

Now that we have our house in a livable state, it's time to dust off my laptop, find a quiet corner, and get back to work on Dances with Werewolves. I'm looking forward to that magical feeling that occurs when the words start flowing. After all, the only way to fail is to give up. Right?