Flora & Fauna: Liar's Weed.

In an effort to make this blog more user friendly, I'm going to start using a larger typeface in posts that are not long. I can appreciate the difficulties of reading things that are too small to see clearly. As such, I am making this change going forward.

To the right is the latest sketch. It is a re-drawing of Liar's Weed. The lighting wasn't the best for this pic and I'm still figuring out how to get pics to come out right via my phone. But I am going to say right now, I think this is a superior pic to what I posted with the initial sketch on Liar's Weed.

I forgot to draw the seed pods and the seeds, but no big deal, right?

Looking for something to read this week?

What's that tumbling down the screen? Why it's the first trilogy of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar in one place. (Google rotated the pic 90 degrees, I am hopeless at pic editing, but still, there's all three books!)

Book four is almost ready to drop. It will be up on Amazon late next month. It will be much shorter than the first three, but I think you'll still enjoy the ride.

Flora et Faua: Pics to be posted soon.

Dear Reader,

I have been working on sketches of plants in an effort to distract myself from being depressed. I am still figuring out how to work Instagram. Right now it mirrors the images that I post. I'm still trying to fix that. Once I get it sorted out, I'll have some pictures of my sketches for you to view. I am also working on character sketches as well.

The medium I am using for the plant sketches are colored pencils out of my hoard. I have been collecting colored pencils and drawing with them since I was around age nine. Amazingly, I still have a few of those ancient pencils left. I've been judicious in my use and striving to keep a wide range of colors on hand from a fairly wide range of brands. The whole collection almost fills up a crate that is 1ft square. I'll post a picture of my art supplies too just for fun.

If I can get it working right, I'll have the first pic (Liar's Weed) up next Monday. With the colored pencils, I can blend colors much better than I can with markers. I really am much happier with how the colored pencil version came out compared to how the one I drew ages ago with the markers. I am planning to eventually fill in the white space around the plant images with the information about the plants.

I am also going to be doing some sketches of common plants like wood violets, strawberries, and thistle. This project is going to be part of the legendarium for the series. I don't know if anyone will want copies of it, but it has been fun to work on as I am dealing with a lot of stress in my life. Pretty plant pictures are a lot easier to deal with than deciphering just what an individualized education plan is and how it works.

Life update.

Dear Reader,

It has been a week since I posted. I've been busy with a new manuscript that I still have no idea what is going on with it. I started Camp NaNoWriMo a few weeks early and over the last few weeks I have written some material that's been emotionally brutal for me. I don't know if the end result will be something publishable or if it will reside in a drawer forever. Life has been challenging and difficult to find time to write.

Some of this is the fact that parenting is a full time job as is running a household. Some of this is the fact that I have been still struggling with depression. My mood is beginning to improve somewhat. I've tried forcing myself to write despite my mood disorder and all of the anxieties that goes with it. My morning pages have been ugly, folks. It's been rough going and I'm not sure how April will be at large.

I am still working on getting book four ready for release. It is far shorter than books two or three. It is definitely a novella length work. At the same time, I am anticipating that people will enjoy it because it is not as weighty as the other books. It marks the point where I am splitting the proverbial party. Books five, six, and seven are less jumping between major characters. It also is where you get more than a taste of supernatural shenanigans. I expect it to be ready by the end of May.

Book seven has gone in weird directions as I am trying to finish it up. I think that editing this is going to be headache. I'm not entirely sure what I am doing with this book. I honestly am concerned now that I may have to rewrite the entire thing.

Craft of Writing: Writing through Pain.

Dear Reader,

I'm struggling right now to keep moving forward. I am well and truly depressed right now. Seasonal Affective Disorder and Bipolar have teamed up to do a number on me. Writing as therapy is a fairly well recognized practice. There are tons of therapy writing prompts out there. In the end, no number of prompts are going to help you if you are not willing to put something painful down on the page.

I've been in some form of therapy most of my adult life. I was introduced to journal writing as a therapeutic tool back with my first therapist in college. It was hard at first. It was painful and distressing to write down the ugly things that were in my heart and head. I was half tempted to give up on it right at the beginning because I didn't want to read these things to my therapist.

I mentioned this concern to my therapist and I was told something absolutely liberating. I didn't have to share anything in my therapy journal with them. I didn't have to discuss or show what I had written. The journal was just for me to write about what I was struggling with and how I was coping. It completely changed how I approached therapy writing. Instead of viewing it as an assignment to complete and turn in, it became a space where I explored my Post-traumatic stress disorder and all of its permutations in my life at that time. It became a space where I addressed my chronic nightmares and attempted to make sense of the insanity of my life at that time. The stress of college on top of the stress of coming from a traumatic history made things very difficult. My therapy journal writing became my lifeline to sanity through those challenges.

My morning pages look more like that old therapy journal work than the short stories I used to write in my writing journal. That is alright, though, because there is no wrong way to do morning pages or therapy journal work. The fact that I am writing the pain down and processing it is what matters. Between my knitting for charity, my crochet for charity, and my morning pages, I'm beginning to make progress on getting to the other side of this depressive episode.

Perhaps some day soon, I'll get back to writing prose that is more fanciful and artistic. Right now, I am just shoveling manure from a sitting position. And that's ok as long as I keep writing.

Posted from my phone.

It is a superintendent's conference day. I may be going a little bit crazy right now. So far, I have been bombarded with what if questions about things ranging from "what if we get a free cat ..." to "what would you do if we had a whoopie cushion the size of the earth? " If I ever say that I am at a loss for absurd prompts for writing, somebody remind me I have kids who ask the weirdest questions.

Please be advised, content coming soon!

Dear Reader,

I haven't forgotten about you. I've just been really, really busy. Next week, probably towards the end of the week, I will be posting up some new content. I've some irons in the fire that are just about ready to be declared completed. I'm also going to start posting weekly writing stats on my current project. I'm cheating at Camp NaNoWriMo because the kids have spring break in the middle and towards the end of April is going to be really busy around here.

My posting writing stats is going to be a little different than previous times. This is because I'm writing by hand and I'm logging details for SCIENCE! If you're following me on Twitter, you may have recalled I rather rashly accepted a challenge of writing a novel by hand with a mechanical pencil. The goal is to see if I can hit 50k with just one pencil. If MythbustersJr  were able to hit that number with a robot, I'm determined to get to it myself or possibly a little past it if I can.

My husband has declared me to be bananas and a dork. He might be right on this one.