I don’t do resolutions anymore. I gave up on those a long time ago. But I do believe that changing from one calendar to the next is an opportunity to re-evaluate things and shift my perspective. I’m not alone in saying that last year was one of the hardest years I’ve ever had to survive. During my doctor’s appointments, I always have to fill out a depression inventory and, at some point, one of the doctors got to examining my answers to those. That prompted a psychiatrist visit.

I was completely overwhelmed last year and discussing this whole thing with the psychiatrist was in some ways intimidating but at least I can talk about it now. I guess that means I’m the conqueror to some degree. She told me that I’m exactly on track with my CPTSD and that I’m doing everything right – Not what my anxiety is telling me – and that I should just keep on swimming.

She also told me I should write a book.

I don’t tell many people that I’m a published author. I mean, my sales aren’t where I’d like them to be but then I’m not really promoting myself nor am I releasing new work. And all of that is entirely my fault. Instead, what I’m doing is playing with it all and learning my art. My vision is to be an author who creates her own cover art and can also help others to get their work up on Amazon and do their cover art! That’s my goal.

I guess I should do it for me first before I start to advertise.

So, with that, I’m going to try to set aside time every day to work on Dorian 2 which has been on my to-do list for – well, a really long time. I know what needs to be done and what has to change yet I’m unsure what that will do to the character arc.

I realized some time ago that I was putting my trauma and the processing of that trauma into my books. I realized Joanna was in a huge part a representation of me and my journey. In some ways, Dorian’s story mirrors my own better than Joanna’s. His experience of childhood adversity and being hounded by people who only wanted to hurt him mirrors experiences I’ve gone through which is perhaps one of the reasons I’m having so many issues with this particular book. Once trauma is processed, it becomes like a scar but scars can still be tender sometimes. They can occasionally break open and bleed again and need to reheal. With flashbacks from when I was 13 re-emerging last year, many of them of memories I hadn’t even realized I was carrying or had experienced, this becomes more real to me. I know I’m far from being the only one to walk this path. In fact, I believe there are many people who go through this.

Sadly, that shared sense of sisterhood knowing I’m not alone in this struggle doesn’t actually comfort me. What does comfort me is the fact that the Spring Semester is just around the corner. I’m going to a different campus to get away from paying for parking. I could do that when my grocery bill wasn’t scary. Yet another reason last year was so hard. This will be a new adventure for me and I’m going to be conquering math next which – I hope I’ve honed my combat skills. Math has always been hard for me to grasp, and I’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up. But there will also be art and that has been what is carrying me through all these hard times.

I’m so looking forward to putting out more books and sharing my writing with others, even if I just end up pulling them all down, doing better artwork on the covers and completely revamping them for a second release! I’m an author! I can do that! And I’m writing as well, on a book I started right after the massive flashback I had in June of last year which set off the misery cycle I was in for the latter half of the year. That book has been a huge comfort for me and the thousand pages of text I’ve generated are a testimony to the fact that we as humans can turn any hard thing into a good thing. We just have to decide whether we want lemonade or a margarita.

My hope is to be able to keep up with my author blog better this year and to have more encouraging things to post. I really hope that 2023 does its part by being cooperative and not being a brat. I hope the new year brings us all hope and courage, joy and contentment. I hope that by the end of this year, I will have two books released! I don’t do resolutions but I resolve to keep fighting the fight. I refuse to quit. If life keeps giving me lemons, then I’ll just have more margaritas!

I didn’t even review my posts for this year because I already know. 2022 was a really difficult year for me personally. I’ve spent a lot of this year sick. It’s the main obstacle I’ve had which has caused me to be unable to do the things I most wanted to accomplish. It’s affected relationships, including my relationship with myself, and affected my work. It has affected what I was able to get done this year to a huge extent. I’ve had a huge amount of mental illness this year that I’ve tried to cover up because I didn’t want to admit to myself just how bad things had become.

Depression, anxiety, crushing fear and apprehension over a certain situation which I believed represented a small change in my world but became a change so huge that it just really cracked all of the recovery skills and progress I’d made in two decades and set me back – gosh, set me back a decade or more. I feel like I’m starting over in some ways. I apologize for not getting Dorian 2 out in a timely manner. I spent all of my time this year writing on the same book which became a way for me to process a really terrible and tremendous series of flashbacks of an event I thought I had already processed through.That is how I process my trauma. I started writing when I was thirteen after a terribly tragic event my parents exposed me to that just changed me completely. I write to get it all out of me and I’m up to a thousand pages on that book and I work on that to numb myself, process through emotions, and keep my mind busy so it won’t continue to run in never-ending circles of worry, fear, depression, and crippling anxiety. It accomplished that but it meant I got little else done. I’m actually really surprised I was able to complete the classes I took this year because my health was so bad.

It’s my hope to be able to release Dorian 2 early next year but I won’t make promises I may not be able to keep. I’m still having a lot of issues. I’ve had to reconnect with doctors and update my PCP on issues I thought I had solved, start medications again to keep control of my mental health. I’ve got people checking in on me that – I really thought I had no support network but it turns out I do and I’m so grateful for that. I’m aware that Depression kills. I’ve worked in mental health, so I know the risks and the stats. I don’t want to be a stat so I’ve focused on myself in a new way this last six months to the exclusion of all else. With that said, Dorian is still on my mind and my goal is still to finish the series even as I work on this other book which became a series all it’s own and continue to pursue my education to be the best of my ability. I’m grateful for those who read my blog here and those who read my books. I’m looking forward to a new year full of hope and promise. Every processed flashback is one more festering wound cleared out of my soul. I don’t enjoy the process, but it is what it is.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Holiday season however you choose to celebrate and safe travels. I wish you new friends and connections which will bring you joy and hope for all the days yet to come. I wish us all a stable world in which we can continue to explore and grow.

I wish you peace. Happy Everything.

How long has it been? Months? I’ve been away since my last post. By away, I mean an out of body experience that carried me to some deeper place from which I now seem to be just emerging.

In June, I was doing a summer semester to repeat classes in order to update my Associates degree, making it easier for it to transfer to a four year university. It was a simple class but I took the one with the insane teacher who used the weird online book and publisher developed assignments that came with the horrible user interface which only worked in theory. Four weeks of that and I was ready to explode.

On the close of that stressful class, I had a massive emotional flashback which just seemed to push me over an edge I didn’t realize I was so close to. So I allowed myself to decompress through movement one weekend, between Summer semester one and the beginning of Summer two.

I partied all by myself! I walked a lot. Over a three day weekend, I did close to 50k steps! I was on a roll! I realized at some point that I was tired. Worn out first by the school work and lots of sitting which had frustrated me to the extreme. Overwhelmed by this flashback which had been all emotion and little else, which for me feels much worse than a flashback involving images. This was me burning all of that off, frustrations and any other emotions which I might be feeling but not acknowledging just then. At the end of that weekend of walking, I decided to try and dance to some old favorite songs! What a wonderful experience that could have been!

The x-ray showed nothing is broken. However, there was numerous indicators first that there was indeed a deep joint injury. I was tired on top of the dancing and horribly sprained my entire left leg (wildly jumping up and down is not for me) and did something terrible to my left knee. I sat down for a couple of weeks and worked on my second semester. Then, feeling better, I got back up and resumed my life, unfortunately including the dancing.

That led to the second sprain. I hadn’t let it heal. So I sat down again and finished the second summer semester. Managed to pull an A and a B from those two short, intensive, slightly horrifying semesters. There was one week between the last summer semester and the start of fall semester. During that week, I should have poured all my effort into Dorian two. I should have. Didn’t.

Instead, I started another book and poured all of the stirred-up remembrances from that horrible flashback and my frustration of being forced to be stationary when I most needed to process things through movement! This book was fraught with all the feelings I’d recovered in the flashback and was fueled by much music (usually the same songs every single day) and when I looked back over it some weeks later, I discovered it was horrible but I had gotten all of the ideas down on paper.

Both summer semesters were online. The Fall semester was not, which forced me to start walking six blocks to class and six back to my car twice a week. Three weeks into the Fall semester, my left knee locked up. Thus the x-ray. I just love the phrase “age-related decline” but there were other terms in there too, like osteoarthritis and voids, and bursas. In simple terms, I’d injured then reinjured myself like three times and my muscles just got to the point where they were not working at all. I’ve been on forced rest for quite some time. I’ve been able to recover some of the use of my left leg but it’s nowhere near the movement I was accustomed to before the original injury at the end of June.

Stationary is not a word I like. I can’t ride a bike inside the house. That hurts too much. I can barely walk some days. But time, the doctor assured me, would cure all ills. And at some point, I’ll potentially start therapy to recover what I can. I started glucosamine and turmeric to deal with the joint injury and age-related issues plus the inflammation. All those things I was supposed to be doing in the house which I had ignored, I can’t do them now. I’m forced to rest and slow down and focus on things I was really running away from.

One of those is Dorian two. I’m still going over what is wrong for me to be stuck on an edit. I’m stuck on an edit! I’ve written seven hundred pages with this other book and am rewriting some of it now. So it’s not that I’ve got writer’s block. There is some issue in the continuation of Dorian’s story which is causing my brain to say nope when I try to edit it. I believe I’ve discovered what it may be and I’ve made a note on the manuscript while I’m letting it stew in the back of my mind. Meanwhile, I’m working on a manuscript of a fish with visions of being fast and furious.

As I sit here, late on a Saturday night, my left leg is aching. I’ve never appreciated a heating pad and a comfortable sofa so much before now. I’ve come to the point where I realize just how mysterious and frankly aggravating the whole writing process can be. As an author with a blog who wants to put the best foot forward and show myself being productive and all wordy, at the end of every day, there is a strange rhythm to how my writing works and I don’t always understand it.

I hadn’t even realized so much time had passed by until I realized there are only eight more weeks of the Fall semester left! Time is hurrying by me while I elevate and heal. Joanna is still on my heart and always will be. She’s so me but I’ve come to realize Dorian was another part of myself I hadn’t even been aware of. A different part of me is in the fast and furious fish who is taking up all my free time now. His struggle contains so much of what was included in that flashback in June. Joanna and her friends contained earlier flashbacks because that’s how I learned to process trauma. I write it out. Still writing. Just wishing I could be like those authors who seem to have reins which direct their skills and keep it focused. Mine seems to be as wild and uncanny as I am with my bum knee.

Editing is more than just reading through to spot errors in punctuation or grammar, something MS Word can usually do for me if I ask it to. Editing is often going over a document to see what the favorite transition word is of that document. I wrote one where, I swear, I must have used the word “then” two thousand times. One of my edits was focused solely on removing all of the ‘then’s. But I can’t remove them all! Some of them really do belong. It’s a matter of picking and choosing and deciding which ‘then’s get to stay and which have to be transformed into other phrases or just broken apart into two sentences.

Editing is actually quite fun if approached in the right perspective. It’s all about finding a voice for that particular novel, essay, novella or article which fits in with what the message is but also sounds the way the author wants it to sound. Sometimes, I’ll need to read through a sentence and the surrounding paragraph to decide what fix is best. It can be quite a challenge because after about forty pages, I’m normally paying more attention to the story than to the editing!

Perhaps this might give an idea of why it takes so long to accomplish the publication of a novel. I really don’t know why it’s taking me so very long to get Dorian 2 into print. Honestly, it’s been busy for me with college and also with some health issues which needed attending. Then there were household issues and Joey issues and just plain issues relating to the fact that if you spend days staring at a computer screen, a time eventually arrives when you want to do anything that doesn’t involve a computer. Burn out can happen to anyone. So much of life as a student, an author, a bill-payer, a book lover involves me staring at a screen.

For this particular book, Dorian 2, my favorite word was ‘so’. I could not believe how upset it made MS Word to have so many sentences begin with the word ‘so’. Therefore, I went out of my way to minimize how many incidences of that actually occurred. In general, editing for me requires too much attention so I’ll restrict myself to looking for certain things. Taking all the ‘so’s out for one, looking for spelling issues (which MS Word doesn’t always catch), and also making sure that if the character’s eyes are blue at the first page, they’re still blue on the last page! That means, other issues need to be addressed in future read-throughs. I pay attention to gender now. I didn’t used to do that but I do now. When I read new books by other authors (which does happen whenever I can schedule the time), I see these new trends taking place in fiction and how gender and also point of view are handled.

Point of view and perspective are also topics which must be considered. If this paragraph is allegedly coming from the thoughts of a character, does it seem like it does or is it in third person? Just a few changes of words and the placement of pronouns can make it seem more likely to be an internal dialogue and not an author stating instead of describing! Very technical and also something that can get by those who haven’t edited extensively, which was me for a great many years. I hated editing and had to force myself to do it. My way of handling it was to read through the novel and change things as I found them. Not a great strategy and certainly not time-saving, but it helped me to learn how to edit and I admit I practiced for years for I really felt like I had the hang of it. But it does take several read-throughs before I feel confident I’ve found the majority of the errors. I was just rereading Joanna two a few weeks ago to find some bit of character info I’d forgotten and found four mistakes I need to correct in a future edition! Just like trying to get ducks in a row, with so much text, it can be hard to get it all to behave as desired.

I realized while I was working tonight, the TV on mute, Joey asleep in his own bed (Yes. He has his own bed), and a fly buzzing around me that it had been quite a while since I posted anything. I’m still hard at work, editing the evening away. It’s a great way to spend a Thursday night.

It’s comforting finally to be able to say I’ve got a cover image I’m pretty happy with. After all the starts and stops and changes in direction, I can say is that I’m way too picky. But I did put my heart into this one and tried to keep it similar to the image on Dorian One in that it has the filled in figures and not fleshed out people. It’s my hope to have the fleshed out people on the next cover which will be Rossyn One!

Going to art classes did help me with constructing the image I want. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help me know what image I want. That’s the issue I’ve had all this time. I’ve got a thousand images I can put on their but, halfway through construction, something inside me just says, “This isn’t the one.”

I know. There may not be “the One” for anything. Not for spouses or cars or cheesecakes. But for me, at that moment, I tend to listen to my gut instinct. It does tell me I certainly need to start designing the cover for Rossyn One now! And not wait until I’m thinking about sending it off to the copyright office. I actually believe, as I go through publishing more books and designing the covers, I’m learning more and more about how to make a great cover. Really and truly, covers aren’t what sells a book but a great cover can be what changes a mind. A great cover can say, this person spent more time on the cover and so wanted my business more. While a lackadaisical image on the cover just says it was designed, popped onto the front of the book, done.

That is one thing I still remember about cover art up to the late nineteen nineties. There were actual painters who really painted the image used for the cover and I could really tell. There were differences in cover designs if, for one book out of the others, they used another designer. It made a huge difference for me. I hope to one day be as good as a designer as I remember seeing when I look back at all the great cover art I’ve seen during my life. I’m not there yet. I’ll admit it openly. Designing a cover is still a challenge for me. I hope as I play more with Illustrator and art, taking more lessons, that will change.

Today in class, we had our first model. She was an older woman, maybe a few years younger than myself. She posed nude so we could practice drawing figures. I suck at drawing figures. That is my truth. I own it. But, like anything else, I’ll get better at it the more I do it. So that was one class down. I intend to take Drawing three in the Fall and, Figure drawing, so I can learn to make people on the page! People who actually look like people!

I was also thinking the other day about my life now. I’m enjoying these art classes so much. My father’s been dead for going on three and a half years. An old German guy, he truly was stuck in the land time forgot. His idea of home and family is nothing like what I see around me today. He controlled my every day and wanted to control every decision. If he were still alive, art classes would not be possible for me. He’d do everything in his power, including falling and hurting himself if it took that, to keep me away from a career in art or creativity. Why did he hate it so? I have no idea, but I wrote in secret for twenty five years simply because I knew he didn’t like it and wouldn’t support me while I did it.

I find it amazing that the arts are the thing which get defunded by those who have the power to decide what public schools teach. I used to wonder why that was when I’d hear stories about budget cuts years ago. I understand now why now. Art helps us to realize who we are in a clearer, more detailed way. It’s why there are cave paintings and ancient artworks which are still available to us now, because someone generations ago, sometimes hundreds of generations ago, wanted to explore who they were with a little artwork they may never have imagined would touch anyone but themselves. I find it very intriguing that art classes are so despised by so many who will then run out and spend a million dollars on some famous painter’s work just so they can hang it in their house.

Art is important and it’s why I think I have so many issues with making covers for these books. These characters were my friends during very lonely times and I don’t just want to slap some picture on the cover. I want something that speaks to me. Even if it only speaks to me, it’s an experience and a learning opportunity. I think that is the second biggest blessing in my life right now. There is a first big blessing in my life and maybe one day I’ll talk about that. For now, I’m going to find some dinner. Taking the rest of the night off to do some rug latching.

February has always been a rough month for me. So many negative experiences happened in February, from my mother’s stroke in 05 to her brother, my uncle, dying in 17. This February was no exception to that rule. A difficult month filled with loss and gray skies. I was very happy to see February crawl away.

Enter March, filled with hope and thunderstorms. So far, all I’ve done is home repairs, but I am officially on Spring Break! So, I’ve spent a lot of time with Dorian 2 and I’ve also put some work on the cover. I’m so happy to say I’ve got the figures done in Illustrator. Hoping to decide on a background image/design. After that, all that’s left is to add the text and it’ll all go off to the copyright office!

That being said, emergency repairs are never enjoyable. I’m happy to have them done and can rest with some confidence I don’t have to worry about that for some time, but I didn’t enjoy spending money I would rather have funneled in another direction. With inflation and gas prices rising, I’m tightening the belt like everyone else. Less eating out and more cooking at home. Less driving and more imagining myself going somewhere in meditation.

Just as I was beginning to despair, I saw it! The very first flower of March was a blue-eyed grass blossom! I was so happy to see it. The fruit trees which normally bloom by the end of February are still bare, still preparing to burst forth with rich color and beauty. Seeing this first flower of spring definitely made my day better.

My evening isn’t over just yet. I’m sitting by the window, opened just a bit to let in the breeze. The TV is noise in the background and has to share with the sound of my typing on the laptop. I’ve spent my Spring Break doing not much at all. Did catch up on laundry and did a bit of clutter control. Mostly, I’ve spent my time reading which is always a great inspiration for working on my own creations. I’ll feel like I will have really accomplished something to get Dorian 2: Old Friend, into print. It’s required more changes than any of the others but once I discovered what was blocking me, it all went smoothly.

Next week, it’ll be back to classes and art. I do love the class but it challenges me. From drawing as a little girl to using art as a form of therapy to cope with trauma and family violence, there seemed to be something always in the way of my drawing after using art as therapy. Taking these classes have really helped me push through that. I’m still finding my voice and discovering myself. All of life is deciding who we want to be.

I hate February. My mother had her stroke in February. My uncle, her brother, had two heart attacks and died in February. Now I’ve lost another relative in February and the funerals just keep coming. It’s been a dismal month but I can say at least there’s been no repeat of Texas’ grid failure in 2021.

I am pleased to say I’ve finished editing Dorian 2. It’s ready to go to the copyright office. I am still, sadly, working on a cover design. It’s not that I can’t make one. I’ve made several, but each one of them just didn’t look like the right one to me. Maybe I’m being overly picky but I remember the cover designs from a few decades back.

I don’t really count the 1940s cover design as anything special. The wasp waisted, huge breasted women being abducted by glassy aliens and ridiculous robots was more like silly cartoons for me. But in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and, especially, the 80s, cover design rocked! In my mind, I can still see the cover image for Andre Norton’s Ralestone Luck and Patricia C. Wrede’s Daughter of Witches. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series always had excellent cover artists. Over time, I got to recognize the skills of certain artists and to buy those books, often just for the cover art.

It’s quite possible I’m just being a perfectionist when it comes to the cover art on my books. It may also turn out that I’m not that great of a cover artist for fiction and fantasy novels. But since they’re mine, I get to play with it and make it whatever I want. I’ve turned out about a dozen images in the last year to grace the cover of Dorian book two, but even if they were great ideas they just never looked right to me. So, I’m starting on a new image with new media.

Still in drawing, class two this semester. I’ve always loved art and drawing but in the 90s when I was doing art therapy, that changed my relationship with art and added a sort of bad connotation to the act of creating art. I’m hoping these classes will help me to separate art from my therapy. I’ve really enjoyed meeting other artists and being immersed in the world of art, as a student. It’s been a wonderful inspiration for my creativity.

I’ve had some setbacks. February is so stressful my mental health has taken a downturn. I’ve committed to my medication regimen and using the tools of DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) and mindfulness to get myself through it as best I can. And the calendar is slowly marching through this month. I’m so ready for March and Spring and more stable weather patterns which don’t include freezing temperatures and snow. But the Texas winter is a good time to get things done inside and I hope that in a couple of weeks, I’ll be able to send off both book and image to the copyright office and to publish shortly after! That would make me very happy.

As I get settled into this second week of the new year, I’m aware that this is becoming more of life blog than an author’s blog. One of my favorite movies is Mr. Holland’s Opus where Richard Dreyfus says “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

My holidays were very different this year due to circumstances beyond my control. My Christmas present was a new furnace. Not what I wanted, mind you, but very much what I needed. This Christmas also marked three years since my father died. While I wasn’t close to him, he was still my father and I spent many, many years caregiving for my parents so they were, despite our difficulties relating, a presence in my world. This was the first Christmas I didn’t honor all the traditions our family when my parents were alive looked forward to. Even my food choices changed and I have to say it brought new life to me while I was in something of a crisis mode.

I’ve also had some health issues over the holidays which are not conducive to working much less celebrating. The New Year came just the same. Time marches on. I had plans for so much I would accomplish over the holiday break and I did none of them. Joey is still here with me and I treasure every day with my 16 year old cat. His middle name should be Demanding.

I have been working a bit on Dorian 2 but it’s been mostly on the sideline and I’m not sure why that is. I do want to get it off my To Do list, certainly. I’m enthusiastic about moving on to Rossyn’s first book but there’s obviously something I haven’t done to get Dorian’s second half ready for publication. It’s an odd thing, how an author feels that the characters communicate. I definitely feel some communication as I found a huge plot hole in one scene and realized I needed to repair a scene where a contributing character was essentially forgotten. So, work continues and I hope to have results soon and a book out by Spring. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it’ll be out in a couple of weeks. It won’t. I’m just not moving that fast. But I am moving and I’m warm again! Thankful to be able to scrape up enough to get the new furnace. Fifteen years is just long enough to forget how much you paid for the last one!

I am taking only one class this semester for the sole purpose of wanting and needing to accomplish other things. I want to focus on my math and get that out of the way so I can really consider transferring to a four year college and get a Bachelor’s degree. I love to study and all my studies have been at the Associate’s level so it’ll be an adventure to study at the Bachelor’s level. Additionally, I need to make more progress on the house renovations. I need my craft room done so my crafts won’t intrude on my bedroom! And with all the drama of last semester and this holiday season, I think it’s wise to slow down and allow myself some time, especially with all that’s going on this winter already. I don’t want to miss a thing and if that means I spend some extra time with Dorian 2, then I think that’s worth it. I hope readers will feel the same.

Blessings to you for this New Year. May we all prosper and grow!

So things are progressing nicely in the world in which I live. First and for myself most important is that my furbaby Joey got a good report at the vet. He got very sick in July, just like his sister did last year. He didn’t have cancer like his sister. Instead, he had a cardiac condition common to cats of his breed. That’s now managed and his bloodwork came out good this last week, indicating he’s as healthy as a 15 about to be 16 year old feline can be. He still has a time limit because I know his kidneys seem to be aging faster than he is, due in part to his surviving the cat food recall of 2007. He and his sister were both 1 year old then and the poison in the cat food took the life of my 9 year old Spaz. Talk about trauma, knowing someone you love died because of what you were feeding him! The vet mentioned that the cancer Sadie had could likely have been caused by the poison or exposure to it, even though Lymphoma is pretty common in pets. I’ve got a friend who has recently had her furbaby diagnosed with lymphoma.

Secondly, and possibly also more interesting to others, I wrote this morning on the story that wouldn’t let go (reference a previous post). I knew it would come back when it wanted to and how it wanted. Sudden understanding of a character and a magazine article about psychopaths all helped me to get a good handle on direction and character development. I believe I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve already got the basics for the second in the series.

Writer’s block is really like a switch in some ways. It can also be like an obstacle course forcing a person to climb out of that into a different perspective and practice of writing. Life has been complex for me this last few months. Bad memories and nightmares, all of which accompany depression and anxiety, basically killed any creativity I had. Now, it won’t kill my ability to quilt or do hand crafts but it certainly does a number on my ability to focus and write.

I wrote a lot and drew a lot while I was a kid. I never once had any problem with what to write or draw. It just flowed out of my childhood brain in a way adults envy. Later in life, as I started doing both as a way to verbalize and heal trauma, it seemed to me as if it was difficult to shift back into writing for pleasure. It was as if the trauma had painted everything with a stain which kept me from enjoying it the way I had when I was much younger. Drawing was one of my classes this semester and, while it hasn’t been difficult, the fact I used drawing to cope and do therapy for trauma tainted it as well and it’s been a long and challenging semester due to that. But I really enjoy it and it will definitely help with cover creation.

It’s keenly interesting to me how all of it works together: the creativity, the way the drawing and writing were used to heal trauma and also how that changed me and my perception of the creative natures of both of those. I love mysteries like that and it’s why I got drawn into the magazine article about psychopaths. Someone once told me my father was one. My childhood certainly testifies that he could have been. But there were some divergent areas which prove he might be kind of low on the spectrum. I do often think back to what life was like with him and what he did, trying to better comprehend his motivation for such behaviors. Sadly, there are some things which defy understanding. But, I digress. My subject matter was the fact that I’m writing again. There is the additional stimulation that the semester has only three more weeks until close, thus giving me time to get back to my previous household renovations. For some reason, physical activity is a must in my creative process. I find that doing chores requiring physical exertion can stimulate my imagination much more than regular exercise will. That and I really want a craft room.

My whole life has been consumed with college classes this semester. IT’s not usually like that. Typically, I spend the recommended number of hours studying. Most classes take around 5 to 10 hours a week to complete in an average 16 week class. This semester has been very different and I wonder if that is because I’m breaking away from the detachment I always had. Dad paid for my classes when I first attended college after High School and since he paid he got to choose what I took. Which meant none of it was necessarily what I wanted. I could never do any art because he thought art was a waste of time. I couldn’t take classes associated with writing or composition because that was another waste of time. However, this semester I’ve been able to take classes I want. Perhaps that’s the reason this semester has taken so much out of me. I’ve applied myself more to this semester than to any previous one.

This application of my time and attention to classes means there was no time to write or design covers. I didn’t completely go without any attention to my writing. I’ve come up with several storylines for future works. Most of these, oddly enough, came to me through dreams! A shortage of time in which to write can be a useful break. It’s time away from the computer screen, time away from the character, time which can be used to get another point of view, mentally review the storyline and characters and also time which can allow me to play with the character in other scenarios which might help to continue the story in the original storyline. Just look at all J. R. R. Tolkien did with his time in between books! I can’t honestly say I’ve accomplished so much backstory but I have used the time getting to know the characters a bit better.

In three weeks, I’ll have plenty of time. Semester will be over and it’ll be a month before the next semester begins. I have big plans for transferring to a four year college but I’ve got a lot of work to do on my appalling math skills so I may keep my schedule light for the Spring. I’m also spending a lot of time with my cat, Joey, who is progressively aging and has some serious medical issues. Aging pets are like comfortable jeans which fit so well you can’t even feel them! They become a part of you! I’m already dreading when Joey passes but I don’t want him to linger just because I’m insecure. I know his sister is on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge waiting for him. This time spent while he’s so ill could mean I’ll spend Christmas on my own this year. But that’s okay. He’ll eat whatever Turkey I offer him!