life in general

Life has been coming at me with both barrels lately, but it seems that a lot of people are having the same stresses and strains.

At least I'm going to be able to get away this weekend, going to another CMSA competition. - although, as I told someone earlier today, what I mean is that I'm packed and ready to go. I won't count on getting there until I'm there. Life has been that way lately.

So, two days of shooting, then home, and then off to Sunny San Jose for a week of training for work. I don't like being gone for so long, but I'm looking forward to the workshops and it will be an easier week than I'm used to.

Our house has been coming along, the rock is done except for the posts that will be rocked and some of the trim. We haven't done much at all on the inside yet, but we're having a door made that's going to be very nice, and they're harvesting and peeling cedar posts for the second floor. I tried to take some photos but they didn't come out.

In writing news, I've finished Thunder Jewel and I've very happy with it. I'm getting the synopsis polished and I'll start sending it out next week. That makes two novels compete and making the rounds, and I feel really good about it. I feel tired, in a very good way, about Thunder Jewel, and I have so many different projects screaming at me that it's going to be hard to pick. I honestly think I need to work on two projects at once. I used to always write short stories like that and it's easier for me to flip back and forth than it is to stay on one project. That probably sounds crazy. But instead of double the time it takes for me to finish something, it halves it - because when I start to bog down, I just change gears and keep going instead of trying to fight through the sludge.

The next main project I'm looking at is the novel I've started during Holly's Sideways class and I've *very* excited about it. I've done more prep work on this one than I have before and I've already filled in a lot of the kinds of holes and back-story that I've always had to go back and fix in earlier chapters as I went along with my draft. I've never been able to find a good balance between pantsing and plotting, but Holly may have fixed that for me. I'll find out over the next couple of weeks.