A lot has happened this summer, and while it feels like none of it is good, that’s not true. There are a lot of good things. We have good friends. We have family. We’ve had a lot of losses, and I have support from many people around me. It’s fair to say I’m stressed and depressed, and it’s expected after the summer’s events. My plan had been to clean up my office and then work in there, but the best-laid plans didn’t happen.

One of my writer friends passed away, suddenly, last month. It’s caused a big ripple among the group, and we’re all dealing with it in our own way.

My office is still a mess. I had been carrying around my binder as if I would work on it, and hadn’t, until vacation when I put it down and stopped guilting myself into thinking I’d work on it when I didn’t.

Yesterday I changed my work-in-progress for the first time since. I also started cleaning in my office. Not a coincidence that I’d reached out to two of my fellow writers from that group and both of them had asked what I’m working on.

Well, I’m working on it again. I’m reading that chapter that completely needs a different POV and tackling that. It’s comforting to know how to fix something that needs to be changed.

I’m thankful for the writers who are keeping me motivated. I’m glad I also didn’t drag it with me on vacation, because I didn’t need the extra weight, but I kept thinking about it while I was gone. I’m thankful for all that time it’s spent in my head while I’m working out the best way to recreate what I want without giving away too much too early in the story.

I’ve learned a lot by sticking to this book. One day I’m going to finish it. Not because I haven’t found the end, but my style of writing is to get the base out, and then dress it up with the necessary descriptions. I don’t know why my brain works this way, but that’s how it goes. Blank room? No furnishings? No problem in the first draft!

It’s the subsequent fixing that takes time. And I know I want to do it right. Even if it’s at my regular plodding pace and how that’s going to be a thing that happens. That, too, has made me think about how I want this to be sent out when I’m done with it, and what I’m going to do to make it successful, and what successful even means for the author I always pictured myself to be.

The writing dream has never died, but it’s changing to fit a world that didn’t exist when I was a kid saying I would write books and be on the shelves in the bookstores. Those bookstores- B Dalton and Waldenbooks – no longer exist, along with so many other things that felt permanent. Change happens- it happens when we are looking for it and when we aren’t, when we’re ready for it and when we aren’t. Even trying to keep things the same is a losing battle that’s also trying to change things. So I’ll keep writing. What will you do?