Losing Myself

So, I'm realizing that I'm getting terrible at keeping a blog. My Tumblr is doing great, but that's only because it's not really meant for long blog posts, though I've posted a few of those as well.

Quite a bit has happened in the month since I last said howdy to you lot. I've been struggling to write as much as I need to for Camp NaNoWriMo. Thankfully, I don't really have much of a social life anymore to get in my way. It's just dancing and volunteering that have stopped me from being ahead. Well, that and my own mind. I'm working on three different projects this month, which is a bit more of a struggle than it really ought to be.

I realized a couple of days ago that in all the rush and craziness of my everyday life, I've started to lose track of what's important to me. I've been so worried about if I'll be able to do everything that everyone else wants me to do that I forgot that my own dreams need to come first. Between my dancing and my writing, I know what I want to do with my life. Everyone else has other plans for me, though.

Go to college, get a real job, don't waste your time on such trivial pursuits. I hear this all the time, and the constant barrage makes me wonder if I'm making the right decisions by following my dreams. Sure, I intend to go back to college and get my degree, but the timing is off. I know I'm capable of handling the workload, but it means I'll be losing every bit of a social life I've managed to gain. And yes, school is important. I'm not denying that, or the fact that I miss it, but I'm in no rush to go back just yet. I left for a reason. I needed to find myself.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I'm going to have to make some tough decisions in the near future. I've got my whole life ahead of me to do some things, but other things... they're within my reach and there's no point in not going after them. If I let my dreams slip away, I'll only be losing myself.

Jumping Right Back In

I can't leave anything alone for long.  It's something that I've noticed.  If I have something that I want to do, I do it.  Call it a flaw, if you will, or just a perk of being me.  I may leave a project alone for awhile, but I will always come back to it.

Publishing my first novel was a different experience for me.  I was put through an emotional roller coaster as I dealt with the problems that popped up.  Oh, there was a typo in the novel that I missed.  The Kindle edition format was messed up.  The font wasn't embedding properly.  The list seemed never ending.

Despite the heartache of publishing, I've already started on another two novels.  Well, I've started on the research and background for these two novels.  Ordinarily, when writing fantasy, the world is yours to create.  When you write urban or contemporary fantasy, though, you're confined to the world that exists already.  Sure, you can tweak it, but it helps if there is some believability to it.

With that in mind, I'm working on slowly building the world in which my characters will live.  Even if the whole novel takes place in one building, I want to know everything I can about the entire world before I set out to write this time.

The End

With everything that's been going on, I'm lucky I've had time to write as much as I have. Things seem to have escalated to the point that I barely have time to think. Despite all this, though, the end of a novel draws near.

I speak, of course, of my novel. It's strange to think I will have to type those words in a matter of hours. I don't want to contemplate how it will feel to have finally done it. This won't be the first novel I've written, but it is the first novel that I've finished and done something with.

The melancholy has finally set in and I know exactly how Jo felt when she finally finished writing Harry Potter. It's bittersweet, but it is something you must become accustomed to as a writer.

Now to finally finish what I started....