January felt like the longest month of my entire life, but now it’s February, and it’s passing so quickly I can’t even catch my breath. I totally didn’t realize today was Valentine’s Day until my sister gave me chocolate. Unfortunately, this means I didn’t have a gift for her or anyone else in the family.
What happened in January?
So, what have I been up to the past month? Good question, let me think about that for a bit. For one, I’ve been sick pretty much the entire time. I had an ear infection in December, and it came back with a vengeance last month. While I was taking antibiotics, I contracted THE virus, which was unfortunate. My ears still hurt even now, but maybe one day they’ll go back to normal. Or maybe I’ll go deaf. Either way, I suppose it is what it is.
Book updates:
I finally finished going through my mother’s edits of the second book in the Heroes of Algar series. Afterwards, I wrote five scenes and attempted to carefully place them into the book in order to make it make more sense. My mother explained the feeling this way: “You feel like you’ve taken out the organs of the book, and they’re all lying on the operating table, and now you have to try to put everything back where it goes.” It was a nerve-wracking process, but for the most part I think it went well. I stitched the book back up and have begun to read through it once again. I’m around half-way through, and almost everything seems perfect.
Except one scene. It was something my mother pointed out which I completely shrugged off, but now while reading through it again I realized she might’ve been right. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m now looking for something wrong with the scene, or if there actually is something off about it. In either case, I’ve decided to do nothing for now until the next read through.
Recently:
Yesterday, my mother and I started to paint my closet. It’s exhausting work that we did late last, but once it’s done my father will put the metal bars inside, and I’ll actually have a place to put my clothes. My room is an absolute disaster right now, but putting away clothes will certainly help it seem a little less cluttered.
My parents are building an extension off their house where the garage used to be. The house used to have three garages, and now it only has two. I’m just wondering why the old owners needed so many gosh darn garages. In any case, the construction has been a bit rough, but the drywall is going up today, which is good. The space will eventually be offices for my parents.
My family from the other side of the country is planning to come visit us next month, and I am very excited. My mother said she’s going to rent a beach house and everything when they come so we can hang out at the beach. Granted, I hate the beach, but it’ll be something to do.
Since I’ve been feeling a little bit better, I actually went to church in an effort to get to know people and maybe even make a few new friends. The one activity I went to was absolutely awful, but that’s because I can’t drive here yet, so I was stuck there until my ride left. I was gone for four hours, and as an introvert, I almost passed away. But hey, I survived, and the people there are very nice, so I suppose it was worth it.
Goals:
I’ve been posting more on my socials, just as I promised I would. Twitter, surprisingly, has become my favorite platform. I don’t spend a lot of time on there, but I get more engagement there, and I definitely feel more connected to people. Sometimes I fall off the horse and forget to post, mainly because I’ve been so sick, but I’ve still been pretty consistent.
I’ve been working more too, which is great. I don’t work nearly enough for a full-time author, which is what I hope to be, but I’m making a lot more progress than I was last year, and I’m even more than halfway through another story (completely unrelated to my series) that I decided to write after the idea got stuck in my brain. It was something I came up with when I was a very small child, and my adult brain has managed to make it into something that might actually be good.
I need to write a story to offer as a subscriber special, but I have no idea what to write. It should probably be related to Heroes of Algar, but as I haven’t finished the series yet I don’t really know what will be in it and won’t be. I have an idea, but we’ll see if I actually pull it off.
Wrap up:
I segmented my blog post this time, aren’t you so proud of me? I think it makes it easier to read. I’ve been writing a lot of blog posts for Book Cave, which is where I learned about segmenting blogs. Head over to their site and look up my name if you want to see what I’ve written for them. Practice makes perfect, or something like that.
I hope you guys had a good month. Tell me about it, please, I would love to connect with you. I would love it if you would follow me on my socials, but if you don’t want to, I’ll see you next month.
Your best author friend,
Sally
