Like a Hammer

Writing returned like a hammer this summer.

Let's take a few very large steps back. I have not really stopped writing in years. What is my second actual novel was written in 2010, and is a completed first draft that I waver between editing and redrafting and more editing and…never touching again. I should probably actually do that. There was a travel blog from my early twenties and my trip to Europe, some sporadic pieces from South Korea and a large number of short stories and unfinished starts from my days in Chicago all the way forward. There are several derivative works (fanfiction), completed, and at least three that are also available to the public online that are unfinished, but still being worked on. In fact, I posted a chapter of one of them last week.

I have notebooks full of stories, parts of stories, story lines, and some very anemic plot bunnies.

The return from South Korea and the move west brought me to the Pacific Northwest and some locally inspired short stories.

My partner and I adopted a cat, Lightning, who is neither quick or electric. She should have been named Thunder, after the sounds of her paws.  When we moved to the house, Lightning was joined by a corgi. HRH, Titania, is 30 lbs. of woof, loves daycare, friends, and the vet. She is also the inspiration, or partial inspiration of a unpublished, unedited, and lost short story about a mage and their service animal. Titania does not have the temperament to be a trained service animal, but she does have the herding dog drive. She uses her skills to make sure my partner and I are safe from harm, and in my case, remember to get up and get water and use the bathroom in a timely manner. Apparently I hyperfocus on my reading and my writing. Who would have known?

Then, COVID, job uncertainty, and rediscovering history. During the first days of the COVID shutdown I could go nowhere, and I had a lot of anxiety and a great deal of cabin fever. When I could go out and walk again, that was amazing. It was about then that I discovered history podcasts.

My current novel (in the final stages of the first draft) was born out of those walks & that podcast. The initial writing for it was done on google documents on my phone using the speech to text function as I drove to and from work. I continued to plan, and research on it, but put it aside as my main focus as I returned to some projects from pre-COVID that I had already started writing.

I was not ready to start that novel.

I finally landed a continuing contract for my day job, began to work on schedules, keeping on track, and monitoring progress. I skipped National Novel Writing Month due to scheduling conflicts with my day job, but continued to work on old projects and pulled that novel idea out of mothballs and started to do some more planning and research.

Then it was summer. Summer is a part of my schedule where I do not have to go in to work; my ten months of work & pay & massive overtime & stress mean that I get paid over the summer months until I return in the fall. That is as close as I will get to indicating what my day job is.

Summer is also a weak spot for me in terms of staying on schedule, doing things in my daily life. In short, my body really likes being nocturnal, and I will return to it easily. This summer I volunteered to do some additional work that would get me out of bed in the morning but leave me with a completely free afternoon.

Somehow, that led to my personal goal of writing a thousand words a day until the end of July. I should have been at 42,000 words at that point. Somehow, I was at 60,000 words. It became a thing. I plowed through the outline that I had written, and here I am, the first Saturday in August, with 75,000 words on my novel, and a goal of having it done within the week. A goal that I may meet.

I anticipate being incredibly exhausted next Saturday. I also anticipate dragging myself out  of bed again to write another thousand words. This time on a different project.

Thank you everyone! Have a wonderful week.