May 4, 2022
Week 82
Emotional State: A Bit Fatigued
Book, Life & The Elephant
I’ve reworked Book Two and have restarted the read aloud edit at the new chapter 20. The plan is to be done by the 15th and take a break before diving in to edits on Book Three. But I may just not do that until July. It all depends on how I’m feeling to be honest. I do like the changes I’ve made so far, and I know I’ll have more editing and writing to do later. But onward is the current movement.
I’ve also had a great brainwave for the novellas between the trilogies. I planned on using those as a breather while keeping my publishing schedule to a book in September and a book in March. That would give me time to write the next set of books while also giving me a less onerous book to write after the mini trilogy’s first drafts are completed.
What I’ve decided to do is to write a previous Host adventure with Angwyndith. The readers will get her adventures while also catching up on what she was like with the other people she invaded. And the plan is to use those as a way to show her character arc as well, but in a more subtle manner. This, of course, requires research to make it historically factually correct, and I’m a bit daunted by it, but also up for it.
We’ll see though. I’ve been very aggressive on my schedule and also built in a lot of time, but I may have underestimated how much work Book two would need. You live and learn.
Speaking of living, the world builder and I spent the last weekend on a road trip to see friends in western Kentucky. We had a blast, although sleep was at a premium. Our neighbors were a happy couple, with a lot of loud joy for living, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And that meant at some point with traveling and not sleeping we got the dreaded pirate covid.
So, along with a fifteen-hour drive back from Kentucky through fog, driving rain, and exhaustion, we’re now tired from a virus we’ve avoided for the past two years. And when I say tired, I’m exhausted. But hey! Work is happening and so is editing, so there’s that.
And then there is the other thing. The big elephant in the room I’ve not addressed on social media anywhere, even though it weighs on my soul. There’s a part of me that needs to avoid it for sanity and another part of me that wants to scream into the void along with all the other people outraged by the Supreme Court.
Listen, I went to law school. I studied Roe v Wade and everyone agreed it was a weak decision. Justice Blackmun knew it, which is why he tried to support it and work it in to every decision he could before he left the bench. That doesn’t make this situation any easier, however. And the reactions to it across social media echo my need to scream. It is the big slippery slope. It has the potential to push us back into the 1950s, while holding us accountable to the 2000s “You can have it all” motto everyone’s pushed on us.
And that will break many of us, even those not directly impacted will feel it, and those other folk on that same hill of slippery slope will feel it too. I hope it’s not the domino it looks like it will be, but I’m scared and trying desperately not to be. I’m tired of many things, including the home of the free not being anything like free unless you live your life exactly like those in power want you to. I’m tired of being preached to, I’m tired of being told what to say, what not to say, how to say it, why can’t you do x y or z, I’m tired of the online drama, the back and forth, the lashing out when all I want to do is talk about books and my characters and the stories I edit.
Most of all, though, I’m just tired.