Hello Blogisphere!
Man, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve done a post like this! I wanted to take a brief pause and give an overall life update in terms of what I’ve been up to for the past few months before going back to my usual posts of book reviews and buddy reads.
Feel free to tell me what you’ve been up to in the comments. I’ve been so out of touch, and I’d love to hear about it! Alright, here goes nothing!
Personal Stuff
So in a nutshell, my life has been completely bonkers since I started my first semester of grad school. Yep, that’s right. The dreaded grad school experience! I’m currently enrolled in SJSU’s Library Science degree program in an effort to become a public/academic librarian (leaning more towards public at the moment).
Overall, I’ve had a really good experience so far. I took a program intro class and two full fledged classes on top of that and did extremely well! I kinda knew I would, but being a noob all over again gave me some doubts.
Naturally, I underestimated grad school and how much time it can take away from you. As I struggle bussed my way through, I completely stopped writing until about a few weeks ago or so. I would work ahead here and there with my classes only to fall back behind again. Grad school is no laughing matter! However, near the end of the semester I forced myself to sit down and figure out a time for me to write because stifling my creative energy was really killing me.
I’m due to start a new semester of grad school in late January, but am super grateful for the long break and will definitely use it to write and read up a storm!
Other more minor personal developments. I’ve nearly completely stopped drinking (with the exception of festive occasions like birthdays and holidays) and I am in the process of quitting smoking! My set date to stop smoking is 12/10/21. Wish me luck! I went to some hypnotherapy sessions and it’s been helping a lot.
Oh, and I’m getting back in the dating world! Not gonna share too much on that, but even with grad school, work, writing, and everything in between, I’m simply tired of being alone (it’s been over 5 years, yikes!) and would like to find someone special.
Writing Stuff
As I stated above, I’m writing again. I’ll be using this off time from grad school to write as much as possible, and actually I’m already working diligently on something.
Since reading The Black Eyed Children by David Weatherly(my review here) and listening to several podcast episodes on the subject matter, I felt brave enough to try to write a short story about it. I’m about 5000+ words in on the first draft, and I’m having fun! It’s a bit different in the fact that it’s not straight up horror, but more paranormal suspense.
I’ve been doing a blend of plotting and pantsing this time around, so it’s been an interesting journey. The general gist is that a recently retired couple has a run in with these strange beings. Chaos ensues.
I hope to finish my first draft in the next week or so, then get to work on polishing and improving (if you’d like to give it a read, say so in the comments! I’d love to have some beta readers). Once I’m happy with it I hope to find a home with a magazine (trying not to self publish if I can, it’s just too much work for me with little benefit given my current situation), so wish me luck!
Outside of my current WIP, I’ve gotten plenty of great short story ideas during the school semester, things like stairs in the woods, abandoned lumber mills (cryptids), a witchy Halloween story, a Halloween portal story, and others that haven’t fully formed yet. My goal going forward with grad school is to focus on a story each semester and hopefully publish through magazines.
I would absolutely love to write another novel, but at this point I just don’t feel like I have the bandwidth to handle it. This means I’ve left my WIP The Ruins incomplete for now (I was about 75% of the way through with my first draft). I can certainly change my mind, but for now I’m happier tackling smaller writing projects that are more manageable for me.
That’s a Wrap!
Alright, that’s it for this post. If you’d like to talk about how you’ve been lately, feel free to share in the comments! I’d love to start a dialogue.
Have a wonderful day!
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