Popping in For an Update

Wow, when I said I’d be posting less, I didn’t expect that to send me into a “Blog? What’s a blog?” state of mind. But it’s been a while, that’s for sure.

Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Digging deeper into the new job. Working on balance out accomplishing specific tasks and putting out daily fires with seeing the big, long-term picture and pulling things together into some form of organization. Getting good news, even about the bad news, as I learn more about how to do this development thing. Stopping off at The Mmoon on the way from one museum to the other to pick up empanadas for myself and whoever else wants to text me their order. I know it’s not traditional, but I can highly recommend the macaroni, ham, and cheese empanada.

Outside those hours, I’ve been very productive in letting the house stay messier, the laundry stay unfolded, and saying yes when the guys suggest a dessert run to Trader Joes–and then sneaking in a short list of other stuff we need, hence eliminating one of my own grocery runs for the week. Yep.

I’ve also been making serious progress on the YA plot. I’m telling you, if I thought I could balance the new schedule with my first-ever NaNoWriMo, I’d be signing up right now. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’d also be signing up for a slightly insane breakdown, so I’m just shooting for getting the plot done by our next critique session, which we’ve all decided will be a writing session, so we can GET some stuff out to critique! I think I’m that close. It’s still slow, but I’m finding that the concentrated time on my days off and weekends really makes me push myself to figure things out. I hit stalls, and then I force myself back to the laptop to THINK about that gap or that block or that imbalance. And I’m finding solutions. Oh, I know I’ll still face questions and make big changes when I start writing, but the links are starting to click closed on each other, and the characters are starting to say yes to the storylines I’m offering.

And I’m mentally prepping myself to add one more thing to my life in November. I may not be up for NaNo, but I will totally be doing PiBoIdMo. This, too, intimidates me a bit. Last year was INSANE, with my son being hospitalized for pneumonia that month, and me and husband getting the bug that was going to turn into bronchitis (me-TWICE) and pneumonia (him-ONCE!) in the next month. Still, I persisted, and I’ve told them both they canNOT get sick this year. I did get my 30 ideas (more), and while I only developed two of them fully this year, I now have two in-some-revision-stage picture book manuscripts that I am in love with. The intimidation comes mostly from the idea that I still want to finish up THESE books at the same time as I run as-much-full-blast-as-possible on the YA, and YOU tell ME where all the time to do these things plus MORE picture-books is going to come from!

Not a reason to avoid getting the ideas, though. *stifles mad giggle*

So there you go. That’s what’s new with me, and it’s all good and all a little crazy, and maybe those are the same things, right? What’s keeping you (happily) busy these days? Drop a comment in and share!

And Happy Autumn–my favorite season!