Getting Back to Blogging & Celebrating the Small Things

For the past six or eight months I've been going through serious "blogging fatigue" and I had almost come to the point of just scrapping the blog altogether. But in the past week I've come to some writing-related decisions and one of them was that I did not want to give up on blogging. As time has gone by I've realized I've missed it and I knew that if I did quit, I would really miss the relationships I've been lucky enough to develop and the camaraderie that exists around the blogosphere.

Once I decided I definitely wanted to get back to blogging I couldn't think of a better way to do that than by re-joining the Celebrate the Small Things hop. I used to participate this hop and am looking forward to being part of it again. The hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to see what to do if you want to join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

So what am I celebrating this week?

1. I'm thrilled to have finally come to some writing decisions as far as future projects, which I'll share in next week's IWSG post. In turn, I'm thrilled that those decisions made me realize how much I have missed blogging. I'm celebrating being back in blog land!

2. The X-Files is back! I enjoyed the show's return and look forward to the rest of the episodes. It was fun to have Mulder and Scully back on my screen. If you're an X-Files fan like me you may be interested in the post I wrote about my favorite episodes on Untethered Realms a few weeks back.

3. This really isn't a small thing, for my family it is a BIG thing for sure, but I'm celebrating the fact that we are taking my mom out for her 88th birthday this weekend. Not only is she turning 88, she's celebrating a year of remission from her cancer. She is happy and healthy and doing so well that I can't really believe how far she has come in a year.

Now to hop around and see what everyone else is celebrating. Happy weekend, all!

IWSG and Happy 2016!

Hello, all, and welcome to the first 2016 meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

The IWSG is hosted by our Ninja founder Alex J. Cavanaugh. Alex's co-hosts to help kick off the new year are L.G. Keltner, Denise Covey, Sheri Larson, J.Q. Rose, Chemist Ken, and Michelle Wallace.

If you'd like to join the group, just visit the list here and add your name. Newcomers are always welcome!

I'm not feeling particularly insecure this month (a miracle!) but more just excited and a little overwhelmed. I have lots of new ideas for stories and articles I would like to write and submit to markets in the coming year, but I can't seem to settle down and focus. For the past few years I've focused exclusively on my novels and while that has been wonderful, I want to go back to some other writing goals I let slip by the wayside. I'd love to write some short stories and non-fiction articles and, with luck, have them accepted for publication somewhere. I hope by the time we have our last meeting of the year I'll be able to say I did that!

For the rest of this month though I'm working hard on polishing my novel, which I finally finished on New Year's Eve, just barely making the end of 2015 deadline I set for myself. I have lots of revisions and overall polishing to do now, but I'm excited to work on those because I feel really good about the story now.

Last year I felt kind of burned out with writing of all kinds so it feels great to be excited again. Even though having lots of ideas hopping around in my head is a little overwhelming, it's a much better feeling than being stuck and burned out. So I'm hoping to keep that excitement going as we march along through 2016.

I'm looking forward to checking in with all the other IWSG members and the rest of my blogging pals and catching up with all of you. I want to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year and here's to a great 2016 for all of us.