General Update, WTFIJW

WTFIJW (What the Fuck is Joely Writing?!?!)

I usually post these in the Triune (Facebook group) but I realized I hadn’t blogged in a while and thought I should try and get back into the habit. (Incentive to join the group – I’m running giveaways every day through Sunday for some signed goodies I picked up from BABE 2020.)

I’ve been pretty quiet the last few days, weeks, and maybe a month. I am still working the Evil Day Job, which I’m extremely grateful for and glad the entire company is able to work from home. It’s been fun to see team members join me at home (I’ve been a telecommuter since 2000) and it’s pretty much business as usual, except for not being able to find certain items in the stores. The girls are all home and the school year is over other than online classes for all three. Poor Middle! She’s a senior this year and missing out on prom and graduation. The school is going to try and schedule an event later in the year.

I believe I’ve posted here before in very general terms about the “C and D situation” I’m going through right now with That Man. His C is back and the D is still delayed. It’s been a stressful few months waiting on everything. Mediation was postponed thanks to Covid-19 and now he’s dealing with health issues, so I really don’t know what’s going to happen, how long it’s going to take, and what that all means. I feel stuck. Trapped. Unable to move on with my life. And it sucks.

For someone who really needs stability, all this uncertainty is draining.

I hadn’t been able to write much at all. It’s been all I can do to keep up with the EDJ, and I’m sleeping way more than usual and still feeling exhausted. Needless to say, I’m pretty behind on everything.

I know many of you are frustrated that I haven’t written anything really long and meaty since Queen Takes Triune. My plan was for Sunfires2 to be a really nice long book, but the D is still dragging on, and my creativity has taken a huge hit. I delayed the preorder 30 days, but I may need to delay it again. We’ll see. I don’t want to risk losing my preorder ability for a year, but I can also only do what I can do.

The shorter stories may seem like a distraction, and not worth your time. But I can say from a creative standpoint, they’re easier for me to do right now. They don’t take as much extended mental and creative flow to put together. Usually I just need the idea, and they’re small in scope and I can pull them off in a few days rather than months.

Another benefit of writing short stories: they help me with the inertia problem. Bodies that are at rest are really hard to get moving again. The same goes for words and the creative flow. I had been blocked this entire month, but once I had the story idea for Coterie, the #BBBPublishings Mafia anthology, I wrote it in a matter of days. Now that I’m making words again, I’m going to switch back to one of my other projects (Queen Takes Venom and Sunfires2) and see if I can keep that momentum going in my favor.

4thewords has also been a great help to get me making words again. Small goals, even 100 words in 30 minutes, may not seem like much, but again, inertia takes a huge amount of effort to overcome initially. Once I’m moving again, it takes less work to keep that momentum. I may not be fast right now, but I’ll take what I can get.

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

Long live House Isador!

PS Order updates. Shipping from KDP has been sloooooooow but I did finally get all the TVQ books back in stock. I’l be doing my best to get the next orders out this weekend.