STATUS – Still Here, In Spite –

Hello and good afternoon.

This is our obligatory post to remind everyone we here at Fifth Draft are very much alive, breathing, and able to sit down at a computer for an extended period of time to write out dribble maybe someone might find interesting.

Sometimes.

Life has been all about adjusting these last seven months, essentially since Baby Girl D was born. Adjusting. Readjusting. Trying to figure out where my window is to write, but failing every time.Seven months is almost the entirety of the twins’ kindergarten year and Baby C’s first year in preschool. What kind of message am I sending to my boys about what it means to follow your dreams if I can’t even update my website once in a while?

“You have a newborn baby.“

Oh yeah. That’s right. Grace.

I thought I’d be more prepared this time, ready to tackle to changes a newborn would bring in our already chaotic home of littles going out into the world for the first time, but I guess not. And the farther I got from the work, the more scared I got (I’ll go into that a little bit more below) to even start again.

The end of the school year is fast approaching, summer plans are taking shape, and I don’t remember how to do this. Or even if I want to do this. More than once I’ve panicked and dreaded and lost all hope. I’ve considered packing this all in. Closing up shop. And pretending I never wanted to be a writer in the first.

I’m still thinking of stories, how to make my stories better, sweating about if my stories are even any good or not, when I can next write uninterrupted, no matter what else is going on. It’s a plague. I try to take it as a good thing.

I’m still here. In spite of it all.

Trying to figure out what the best option is for a wake up call, since I plan on moving my phone charging stand downstairs. This way I don’t have it with me so much. An alarm clock? Not with the baby. Something else.

Will update later.

PROJECT UPDATE:

#AMQUERYING – I’ve been stuck on this Project NESS Revise & Resubmit since last fall. The outline is done, and I know what I want the overall story to look like, but getting to sit, to get lost in it, to feel the story’s ebbs and flows, has proven a lot harder than I imagined. And again, I know, BABY, right? But it’s not at all like riding a bicycle. Once you’re off of it long enough it can feel harder to try to meld back in. And the longer it goes on, the more scared I get of opening up the Word Document to start the changes. But I guess there’s no escaping it. I either do the changes OR I let go of the dream I left teaching for.

CURRENTLY LISTENING: We’re still riding that Final Fantasy kick! And I need something hype, loud, and fast, to get me going.