Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Uhm.... that time when you forgot you had a blog.

So, it's been a while since I've posted because life really had twists and turns, and then I completely forgot I had a blog. Whoops!

But, cool things are happening.  I have 2 children's books that I still adore. A third was written and edited, but it never got published. The publisher I was with didn't pay my illustrators and then didn't find a suitable replacement.  Then, she closed up shop. So, who knows what I'll do on that front. EXCEPT, I have resurrected my CafePress shop and am in the process of creating Baxter print/ship-on-demand.  It's so very cool. When I told my mom, she said she needed a Baxter t-shirt.  As soon as I can get the shop set up completely, I'll post links. 

I have done so little creative writing since my master's degree and the children's books. However, there was an idea I was fleshing out during my coursework. I can't find those files, but I decided to piece together what I could and start a novel.  

Oh - and I quit teaching, went back into technical writing, and moved to Colorado. I'm currently sitting in my beautiful home with my dog, 2 cats, and fish while it is  -2 degrees outside with a windchill of -16. It's also snowing and will continue to do so for at least 12 hours. We'll see what we wake up to. 

Back to the novel. I joined a MeetUp group up here in Colorado that's part of the Shut Up and Write organization. We meet online, which is a hold-over from Covid, but it's great because I don't have to drive.  That ends up taking as much time as the writing part. I started the novel, attempted NaNoWriMo, and realized I'd been "pantsing it." I wrote myself into a very blank page, as it were.  I didn't know much about my characters, and I didn't know how I should go about plotting out the story. So, during one of my weekly online sessions, I started going back and doing the things I used to teach my students.  Now, my MeetUp friends want some of my worksheets and notes from the CW class I taught to middle schoolers. I hope I can find those files. 

I thought I saved all the things went I left teaching because I had so much good stuff, and I could/can put that out on Teachers Pay Teachers at some point. I'm still looking. 

I wrote a lot of articles for The Belly Dance Chronicles at one point, but I got out of that habit when life got crazy. There was a lot of crazy in life for a while. But words are my friends, and I'm still writing. 


TTFN as Tigger would say. 

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