Reflection

A lot has come about in the past year. I've beaten Thyroid Cancer, finished developing our basement (with lots of help!), finished and published a novella: Skin Deep with my Bandit Creek Books group, and gotten a 4mo old puppy for Christmas (a whoodle we named Colby...OMG a Cheese Whoodle!) There have been other small things along the way, but it has definitely been a busy year!

I have to say that a lot of this was scary and very uncomfortable. Of course the Cancer thing was scary, but for me it wasn't the cancer itself but the lack of control over the situation. Finishing the basement has been uncomfortable due to the mess and chaos in shuffling things back and forth between rooms, piling junk almost up to the ceilings in some places, just to have space to complete the next area. Then there was the puppy. I've wanted one for such a long time, but it would be me to train him, clean up after him, feed him and walk him. I haven't had a dog in over 10 years and it was mostly my parents that did that stuff before. I knew I could do it but still scary nonetheless.

Then there was writing and finishing a novella in less than three months, and when I got down to it, it was really only about a month. Then due to a sinus infection the same week that I had booked off to write, my writing time got cut in half. This whole experience with Bandit Creek, while phenomenal, has been extremely uncomfortable for me. I was WAY out of my little box. I had a few deadlines that I ended up being late on, but still I pushed through, no matter the resentment I started to have for writing and the lack of true downtime. I knew this was a short-term project and that if I didn't finish I would be letting down not only myself, but 32 other writers.

I have never written that much in a month. I have never written that continuously. I had never written those two magical words "THE END" before. This whole project, while painful, forced me to do things I may have never done by myself otherwise. This would have been easier if I could write what I wanted for a living, or was even a stay-at-home mom with one kid in school all day and the other in preschool. Instead I was cramming in thousands of words in 20 to 90 minute spurts on lunch-times at my day-job, plotting out scenes on the bus, or waiting till the kids were (finally) asleep. I even checked in with Habit Forge daily to make sure I was sitting down to write something every single day until I was done.

Would I do this again? In a heartbeat...but I may have started writing earlier if I had known pretty much nothing would get done during my supposed "writing holiday." But honestly right now I am glad that I have almost two weeks off around Christmas so I can relax and recharge. Not sure when those voices in my head will start yelling at me to write again, but I'm hoping they'll wait till after New Years.

I think I'll need a new notebook for plotting out something on the bus.