Actually, this last quarter wasn’t quite so bad as the title might make it seem. For the first part, I was on roll, writing almost 25k new words a week. But then I finished that project, started a new career, moved to the other side of the world…yeah, my writing took a hit. Or at least, that’s how it feels.
In January, I was working on Stars of Blood and Glory, and was really on a roll. The application process for TLG was still pending, but I pretty much knew I was getting in, and since I was staying with my parents until it went through, I didn’t have to worry much about money issues. With lots of writing time, I finished SBG in about 6 weeks and published Journey to Jordan. Life was good.
After Stars of Blood and Glory, I went back to Star Wanderers, finishing up Part II and starting Part III. However, something felt wrong, and I didn’t really know what it was. With my TLG departure date imminent, it was really hard to focus, and I wasn’t in much of a position to move on to anything else. That’s when the angst began.
I flew out to Georgia on February 15th, did a week of training in Tbilisi, and then was whisked about 220 kilometers away to Kutaisi. As a consequence, I didn’t get any real writing done for almost a month. However, I didn’t have any major challenges navigating the new culture, and was soon settled pretty comfortably.
The trouble was, nothing was working. Star Wanderers was broken, and I was too close to the project to fix it. But after putting it on the back burner, I didn’t know what to do. For most of March, I switched from one project to another. Nothing seemed to stick, though, and by the end, I was getting pretty antsy.
What if I’d made a mistake to come to Georgia? What if that was the reason nothing was working? It sounds silly now, but that was what was going through my mind. I still worry about it a little, but I think it has to do more with my creative process than anything here in Georgia.
I have a very non-linear way of writing first drafts. After starting the revision for Heart of the Nebula and making some good progress on that, I got an idea for Star Wanderers and moved back to that. At this point, I think the only way to get productive again is to finish that project, even if it sucks. I’ve got a lot of great ideas for other stories, but until I can close the book on this one, I don’t think I’ll be able to make much progress.
So that’s where things stand right now. All in all, it wasn’t a bad quarter, but I’ll be happy when I’ve actually finished something for a change. Hopefully, that’ll only be a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing.
