Category: mental health.

mental health. writing.

An end-of-year update

Today is the winter solstice, which means the year is pretty much in the bag, so I figured I should do an update because all the cool kids are doing a 2022 recap.

It was a mixed bag of a year for me. I am currently working on getting the next novel out of the door and to my editor by the end of the year. That puts me about six months behind according to the schedule I had set for myself at the beginning of the year. The current novel is the first in a spin-off Frontlines series, and I had planned to turn the draft in by the end of June. That obviously didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, chief among which are “2022” and “OMG LIFE”. I’ve had a rough time with my creative output this year, and while things are progressing again, it feels like my brain is working at about 1/2 the speed it was operating at before the world started going to hell in early 2020.

Remember when I posted about 2020 being really rough for creative work? Yeah. 2022 was even worse for me for some reason. Reading the posts and updates of my writer friends and colleagues on various social media platforms, it looks like I wasn’t the only writer who had a difficult time this year, and that fact is a bit of a comfort because it means it’s not just my stupid brain that was refusing to cooperate. Turns out it’s very hard to shut out the world and make up a new one in your head when the actual world is catching fire all around you every day.

As far as release dates go, I can’t make any accurate predictions because there are many moving parts for my editor to coordinate after I turn in this draft (and the next one.) If I had to guess, I’d say the new novel will be out in the second half of next year.

I hope you all had a less stressful 2022 than I did, and I really hope that 2023 will be less interesting times, in the Chinese proverb meaning of the phrase. I am not telling the new year to “bring it on”, because that’s just asking for it at this point. I’ll just keep putting down words until the work is done, enjoy the company of friends and family, and tune out of the news and social media as much as feasible.

Happy holidays! May Santa (or the loot-conveying mythical figure of your choice) bring you everything you want and need, and may the new year find you healthy and at peace.

 

aminals. mental health. new hampshah.

(The butterfly is a paid crisis actor.)

Took a walk to my favorite pond the other day, and this shot turned out pretty all right:

 

With the world the way it is at the moment, I am happy to be in a place where I can just walk out the door and be at this sort of place within ten minutes of leisurely walking. I’ve never been a big fan of exercise for the sake of it, but walking out in nature never fails to improve my mood…unlike reading stuff on the Internet, which never fails to make me anxious. However the next year or two are going to go, I’ll probably be doing a lot more of one and a whole lot less of the other.

Walking is also great for listening to audiobooks or letting your brain resolve plot knots with its background processes. The Internet is useful for a lot of things, but for me it’s mostly great for realizing it’s 5pm and I got very little done because I hopped on the information overload train all day.

My favorite season is just around the corner, and I have a plan to walk a few miles every day to really squeeze the most from autumn this year. I feel like I spent most of last year’s autumn cooped up inside because I had a novel overdue (like so many other writers in 2020.) This year, it’s all mine.