Sunfire Progress

Good news! I am making progress on Queen Takes Sunfires2 again!

As I’ve posted before, I’m going through a nasty divorce and it’s been really hard to focus for a variety of reasons. I’m still in limbo, but the end is in sight, and I’m trying to gear back up for some decent production.

I had to start small. Like really small. Even the 444 word goal on 4thewords was too much for me most days. I printed out a little NaNoWriMo calendar I got from HB90 and decided I would accept either 250 words or 30 mins of focused, uninterrupted time. Even if that was just re-reading files, plotting, working on characters, etc. I just had to focus for that time. There was no “sprinting” or race.

It also helps that my youngest has to be up for marching band by 6 AM every weekday, so I’ve had about 30 mins before the Evil Day Job each morning to work. That way I’m hitting the file first thing in the morning. Even if I don’t touch it again all day, I still got something done.

It’s slowly paying off. I’m still nowhere near my usual daily word count that I know I’m capable of, but I’m being patient with myself. One day I only got 29 words – but I was working out details for some of Karmen’s sunfires. That was a win. Yesterday, I actually managed just over 1200 new words, as well as edits on a scene I’d written months ago but got stuck in.

I often say that writing is magic for me. I don’t know WHY I do a lot of things, but I just intuitively know it’s right. For example: I was working on Karmen’s charm bracelet to get my mindset back into the world and characters. It had to be gold, naturally, and I didn’t have any gold charms in stock. I started shopping for various gold charms I could get in bulk on Etsy, and I bought some rather strange ones. Like bees. I had no idea why bees worked, but I wanted them, and so I got them.

With my focus issues, I’d stopped using music with lyrics and had been using meditative/zen sound tracks, but this weekend, I remembered that I’d set up a Sunfires playlist on Spotify months ago. I started playing it. And then, out of the blue, the song Black Honey started playing, and I got chills. Yep. That’s exactly why I needed bee charms.

I’m still nowhere near release yet – but I am making progress and I’m feeling more like my old self. Or rather new self. I’m stretching out and opening up in new ways that still astound me. I had no real idea that I’d allowed myself to be so small and shrunken down, but as Karmen says, you do anything you have to do to survive.

Survival time is over. Now it’s time to get busy living. And writing.