This has been quite a year… 2010 featured the 2010 Olympics, the non-celebration of my 20th wedding anniversary due to crazy circumstances… and then things went wrong: my mother’s diagnosis with ovarian cancer forced us to find a care facility for my father, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. The rest of 2010 was spent caring for, and coping with, my folks and their situations. Throughout the ordeal of watching my dad go downhill, rapidly, and maintaining a positive outlook about mom’s condition, I have never forgotten that my goal is to write.
I had trouble working on my paranormal romance, because it felt too Real World, and the real world was not a source of too much fun. I set that project aside. Temporarily, of course; I will get back to that one.
In the meantime, my friend Stephanie found the first three chapters of Griffin on her hard drive… chapters which were lost when my computer hard drive died some time ago. [I have blogged about Griffin before]. The discovery of the existence of these chapters boosted my enthusiasm for that project, and I immediately got started prepping them to submit to the PNWA Writing Contest. I then set myself a goal: to finish the first draft of the story by the end of July.
Here it is… May. I’ve written a bit of the story. I have found it much more difficult than I expected to put the stresses of life aside and use the writing as an escape. Now, my father is still with us, albeit in a much less robust form. My mom has been given a clean bill of health. One would think that this return to more or less “normal” life would allow me to focus on writing with renewed vigour. Not so.
It would seem that I need to allow myself time to recover from my mother’s illness. I know I’m the only one that can make myself write. But I will have to start small. The transition from coping mode back to living mode is not instantaneous.