The Ups and the Downs

Hey guys.

I thought I'd give an update of what I'm up to. This exercise is mostly for me, to keep myself... I guess you could say focused. Mourning is crappy with stuff like focus. I'm having a hard time following conversations. My poor husband. I keep asking him to repeat stuff. There is a part of me that just not home and I lose track of a lot stuff other than conversations. 

I'm still so very tired. The bad dreams are there and sometimes my mind just doesn't shut down. I keep thinking about Molly and those last days. There's this part of me that knows I couldn't have done more but there's also the other part that is micro-analyzing everything that happened, always questioning. So, I've been trying to keep busy.

Last week I blogged about Salvaging Toby's Heart and asked for suggestions/comments. I'd figured the "dusting off" would be quick but some really good suggestions came in and the fleshing out I'd thought would be around 10k looks like it will be a bit more. :) 

So I dug out my binder for the book... You know when I write a story by the seat of my pants when the binder only has a character list and two pages of story ideas. The rest of it was the first draft of the story. LOL! I'm creating a new binder the will include detailed character pages and outlines for what I want to add. The new binder will also house the info on the other books I'll add to the series.

Funny that. I never meant Salvaging Toby's Heart to be a part of a series. At the time, I didn't see any romances for any of the other characters until I wrote a flash fiction for Max last year. Then a possible plot came to me for Wolf. (A warning for the strictly MM readers, Wolf's story will be MMF. That's how he rolls. :)

Now I'm sitting here looking at a few more stories to add to my board as well as making Toby's better. But this is not something I'm going to work on exclusively because I still have Bespoken and an upcoming due date for Lucky Charm.

Before everything happened, I'd set aside the month of February to put Lucky Charm together, and I'm going to keep to that schedule the best that I'm able. I don't want to wait until the last minute to get the story written. I get too flustered, stressed, and anxious when trying to write on a deadline so best get it done now even though I'm struggling with words that aren't darkly emotional. But Lucky Charm has one character, Navinder, who is darkly emotional so I began pouring words into his narrative. I completed almost 600 words on Sunday and today I'm up to 2400. Whoot! I'll take it considering I haven't written anything for more than three weeks.

Annnndddd... I'm transcribing Bespoken. I have more than 55k (one third of the story) to type up. I'm struggling with this too because I usually edit as I go. I have to be careful otherwise what I'm adding is dark and negative. So that's slow going, but still going.

I'm not stuck, just not going anywhere fast.

When not at my desk staring at the screen, I've been cooking. Not that cooking isn't something I normally do... mostly. Admittedly, Jason does a good portion of the cooking for us. Usually when I do cook, it's uncomplicated and simple. The more upset I am the more I cook complicated dishes. Jason said he could always gauge me by what I do in the kitchen. Last week, he threw his hands up in the air when he brought home a list of ingredients from the grocery store for another detailed dish. (That one turned out fantastic.) "You're unhappy. Go write on your book." At the time, I couldn't. Nothing was coming and I told him so. We've had sandwiches for dinner the last couple of nights, and strangely, he's very happy with that. :) Go figure.

There have been ups and downs. I know this. My father's passing two years ago taught me a lot about the stages of grief. This time around I'm not constantly wondering when I'll feel like my old self. I know that it will come eventually, to have patience and allow myself to grieve. I no longer worry that it's too much or that I've been mourning for too long. When Dad passed, I thought I had to keep pushing and pretending everything was okay because at sometime it would really be okay. I'd fake it until I got there. Now I know I shouldn't push or pretend. It's okay to cry as much a I need to. It's okay if I don't accomplish anything but getting out of bed. It's okay if I spend the day out of the house doing absolutely nothing.  Today was a balmy 61 degrees, overcast and windy and all I wanted to do was spend time in the backyard and listen to the wind blow through the boughs of the trees. All of it's okay. If I only read through my series notes or only transcribe 200 words or review my to-do before I leeave the office for the day, that's all right, too. 

Thank you for stopping by and reading!!