Update Link: Not Knowing When – Part 15

Where do I even start? This has been the absolute strangest year and I feel like I’ve bouncing around so much mentally. I’ll have a few good days and I’ll think I’m back on track, then I’ll have an entire week of just terrible days where getting out of bed is the worst. I’ve been trying hard to deal with it on my own, but honestly, it’s kind of beyond me to handle. So I started therapy through Better Help this week. I have a counselor who specializes in anxiety and stress and her first big piece of advice was to be more mindful and to set tiny, realistic goals that are attainable every day.  I thought I was doing that, but my idea of realistic is, uh, the opposite, LOL.

What does any of that mean for the writing? I’m not sure yet. I love writing, but it takes mental and creative energy that’s been difficult to find these days. Especially when I need to use a decent amount every day at work. One of the other things I have to work on is my constant drive for perfection in everything I do, whether that’s in the writing or in the materials I create for my students. You guys might remember that I walked into this job without zero preparation or materials. There wasn’t even a textbook or a program for me to pull resources from. The curriculum is pretty vague, so my program is one hundred percent teacher generated. Since I turn over every fifteen school days, I’ve been constantly rewriting it. This last cycle I finished on Friday was the best one yet, but there was one major piece of feedback from my students I couldn’t ignore — so I’m rewriting my materials one more time to create a full fledged textbook of my own that I’ll be able to build on.

I’m so happy with the end product of an entire year of experimenting but you might imagine it’s been incredibly stressful and exhausting to be writing my program every month at the same time I’m trying to deliver the content and write in my spare time. You also know that I tend to be my own worst critic and I never feel like anything I write is good enough. I made a resolution this year to be kinder to myself, and I haven’t been very good at keeping it. I’m going to try again and hope this time, I actually listen.

My plan for May is largely to finish what’s in progress. Not Knowing When will be completed next week, and then after that I’ll be taking May off from Flash Fiction just to reset and look at my two remaining projects to make some plans and a new schedule. I’m still not finished editing Fool Me Twice — I’ve been stuck on writing Chapter 30 (the last brand new chapter) and then after that, I have to finish the first round of edits on Chapters 31-38 before completing the second round of edits on Chapters 21-38.

I know it’s highly unlikely I’ll finish that before I’m scheduled to come back on May 9, so I’m adjusting my expectations. I’m going to finish the second edits on Chapters 21-29 and bring those back. We’ll be posting on Mondays & Thursdays, twice a week. I’ll have nine chapters, which gives me about a month of posts. About that point, I’ll be winding down my school year so I’m hoping to have finished enough chapters to keep posting through the end of the book. If not, we’ll deal with it at that point.

After I finish posting FMT, I’m going to take some time off — probably whatever is left of June and the first week of July. I’m going to rest from the year, reset, do some work around the house, and just try to figure how to devote time to writing without setting insane schedules (like writing three books a year, what is wrong with me, lol). I may be writing Flash Fiction during that period or I might not. We’ll see how long it takes to finish editing FMT.

As always, thanks for your support and patience! I’ve got a huge backlist of stories while you’re waiting for me to get myself together 🙂

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