So much for regularly scheduled anything…

You may have noticed that, in spite of the promises I made in my last blog post, there was no update this past Saturday. That’s because, as per usual, my carefully laid-out plans have gone completely awry. (sidenote: this is probably at least partially the reason I’m a pantser. Why bother outlining when it will never go that way anyhow?) Anyway, a number of things came up that veered me right off course. First, I had my writing group meeting on Monday. I was on vacation and missed the meeting before that due to packing, so I’d been away for about a month. Apparently in that time they had decided that the reading night we’d talked about doing would be at the end of this month. Then it was decided that rather than having these readings just amongst ourselves in our cozy little meeting room, we’d do it somewhere public. On the plus side, it might be at a bar. On the down side, that gives me far less time than I’m comfortable with to prepare something. This is not going to be quite as public as the reading I did in December. It’s just going to be us and anyone who happens to be in the bar/cafe/wherever it is, provided they decide to stick around. But it’s still a public place. As nerve-wracking as I find this, I really should try to get the practice, so I don’t want to bow out. So that means that I have to have something prepared.

Which brings me to the next thing that has messed up my schedule. My short story has now come back from all readers with WILDLY differing suggestions (though overall positive feedback which is nice). This means that I have to go through everything, decide what I’m taking and what I’m not. I’m getting through it at about a page an hour and they are exhausting hours. My deadline on this is mid-April (thank god), so I’m concentrating fully on this one and on a friend’s novel edit. Once those are off the table, I can go back to the other things where the deadlines are more of the made-up variety.

And the last two things to throw me off – March Break last week which mean Kid A was at home and that meant babynaps were usually spent playing with him. And, on top of it all, I caught Baby D’s terrible cold on Friday so I have not been able to focus quite as much as I’d like.

So there are all of my excuses. I do plan to get back on schedule, just as soon as the short story is sent off, this reading night is done and my friend’s novel is edited. But being able to breathe would definitely be a good first step to getting back on track.