On Starting Up Again

I’m pretty open when it comes to my depression and how it affects my writing. Mainly that I find myself unable to write pretty often.

I talked a little bit about how this past semester was a rough one on this blog before, but yesterday I vented a little on my Twitter about how I decided to start up daily writing again.

Over the semester, I spent most of the month trying to read as much as a I could and then cramming all of my writing down into four or five days before everything was due. Mostly because I kept telling myself that I had more time to write than I actually did. So I ended up panic writing with my deadline quickly approaching.

Time management skills, I do not know ye.

But I’ve made a personal promise to myself to finish at least one draft this summer. I’ll have a lot of time to write when I go to Poland this summer, especially since a change of scenery always kick starts my creative drive into high gear.

But while I’m still stuck in New Jersey, with the same old scenery I’ve had for 20+ years, I decided to use this neat program called Pacemaker.press. It keeps track of multiple projects for you and it comes with this new calendar feature for its premium users and it’s been really helpful in keeping track of my daily work.

It’s been a tremendous help, especially since I’m such a visual learner and seeing it all laid out like that in front of me helps me keep in mind what I still need to get done. Plus, it lets me set up small, attainable goals every day that will eventually lead to a completed project. So it’s really neat.

Not that this blog post was supposed to be me telling you about this cool thing. I never really know how these blog posts are going to end.

But I’ve started work on my YA Fantasy again, and I’m really glad to be back in that world. I’ve also started a YA piece with the coolest lady around, JM Tuckerman, and that project is going to be fun.