A Path Forward

Howdy, folks!

Well now, July sure was a month, huh? I have some complex feelings about it, as with some experimentation, I settled on a potential model going forward for writing that feels workable while I’m finishing up school, and then promptly had to abandon it due to new concerns falling on top of me.

For the quick version of the Life of Bats, I have been entering a final stretch period of school in a big way, and then had a professional designation opportunity fall in my lap. I’ve been going back to school to get a degree relevant to my day job, and as of this blog, I am just finishing up a course and have five more total classes to complete before I get the degree. Now, credits-wise, at the start of July it was eight classes worth to go, including the class that just finished, but in addition to finishing one class, I tested out of an elective course via taking a CLEP test, and entering August, that plus the finished course puts me at six courses worth of credits to go. That’s one more elective course that I am planning to test out of with a CLEP exam. I am confident with the test I’ve selected, but unfortunately, I do have to study for it, which has eaten into a portion of my free time.

Then in the middle of that, I had the opportunity to get a new professional designation come up, with a course that I’ll get reimbursed for once I complete it, and 120 days of access to study for in my free time.

You know, all that free time I have.

It’s ultimately fine. I have this coming week between college courses that’s free, which I’m using to crunch for the CLEP test, and the 120 days of availability for the designation are overkill based off the amount of material that’s covered to where I can complete the designation over the next six weeks or so without driving myself too crazy. This has, however, taken away almost all of my free time and energy to focus on, and I’ve had to abandon writing for the moment. I’m hopeful I can reclaim that once some of this stuff is done, if not after the next CLEP test then once the designation course is finished. I hope it isn’t that dire, but it might come to that.

But real life blues aside, writing! I did find something that worked for a while with my not-completely-overloaded free time, and that I can hopefully work back into doing even through this mess. So let’s talk about what was working.

After feeling pretty down by the fact that I was only finding time for a single good day of writing per week, I had the thought that, even though I was tired and burnt out, surely I could get some writing done every day. Not my usual goal of 1k words, but 150 is manageable to do, even when tired, right? That’s a couple paragraphs, not even fifteen minutes worth of work. I figured it was worth a shot. And for a while it really did work! Let’s look at progress on Vorstnacht.

Vorstnacht (working title, novel)

So definitely some progress. This accounts for 3,438 new words written over July, with ten working days, most of those taking place over the course of two weeks. It got derailed, as I mentioned, but in saying that, I think I can get back on track to doing it again once I’m feeling just a little less hectored, as right now even the thought of 150 words most days is too much to consider. There is, of course, the fact that life frequently tosses Something New to be worried about and that even when the professional designation and CLEP test are both finished I’ll probably have other things to have to do around work and school, and that will eat into writing time. However, I think I can get there regardless, and hope I can work in at least a bit of writing over the coming month of August. We’ll see, hopefully it isn’t a repeat of June.

Anyway, that aside, the novel is making its way onto the page. I’m liking how this one is shaping up. That’s all I got for now, have a good August and I’ll hopefully have good news in September. TTFN.