Change

It has been a bad week.

Between the spouse getting injured at work, one of the cars breaking down and both of us getting sick back to back, it's been hard to get any momentum on anything.

And that's not even mentioning the worst part of the week.

We lost our sweet old man, Rascal, on Tuesday.

I adopted Rascal back in 1998, so to say that losing him was like losing a child (or I guess really a sibling--I was only 10 when we took him home) isn't an exaggeration. Adjusting to his absence over the past few days has been difficult for everyone in my house--people and animals.

So I guess it's not surprising that I've not been able to devote much head space to my work. My as-yet-unannouncable project has languished since Monday, and I haven't put in any serious work on revisions or on the new novel.

But I have tried to engage with the writerly part of myself at least a little each day.

I'm terrified of my writing ability atrophying--which is not something that's likely to happen in the space of a week, but I'm really good at panic. Even if I can't do "real" work (and by "real" I just mean work that will eventually see print), I feel like I need to do something.

Writing is in many ways a source of comfort for me, though when I'm neck-deep in deadlines and obligations, it can stop feeling that way. I had to shift my focus this week. I couldn't write for anyone else. I was too far in my own head and too stuck in my own feelings. So I did something different: I wrote just for me.

I spent a little more time in the world of Project 2016--I've lived with those characters and that world long enough that visiting them is a little like going home. I worked on some simple revisions for a short story for my writing group. I played around with some different styles, just to see what happened.

Self-care can take a lot of different forms, but I'm glad that, even though I didn't write what I needed to, I still had the chance to get in that creative space. It wasn't as happy as it could have been, but it was, in its own way, a comfort.

That being said, I really have to get back on my contract work. My writing time for the next several weeks is going to have to be focused on meeting those obligations. Which puts me in a bit of a pickle as far as this blog is concerned. Much as I like writing these posts, the time I spend on them will, for a while, need to be devoted to other things.

But I don't want to leave you out in the cold, so I've come up with a plan. Over the next several weeks, I'll be posting a series of interviews and guest post by other authors. You'll still be getting a weekly post, but it won't be one of my rambles. I'm pretty excited about the people I've got lined up, so I hope you'll come back and check out their posts.

Thanks for sticking with me. See you on the other side of the deadlines.