Don't Fret

Yes, I skipped several weeks of blog posts.  I've been caught up in so much going on around me that I couldn't find time to do some of the auxiliary things like this blog. Besides, most of what I was doing was pretty boring.

Let's start with the one thing that was not boring, though!  I went to the mountains last weekend!  We made a wild, mad-dash of a trip in 44 hours from the far northeast edge of Nebraska to Rocky Mountain National Park and back again.  I took some lovely pictures and had a great time.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsm57Kr9Z

The wolf at sunset -- wow.  That was a once in a lifetime event.

Before and after the trip I was caught up in two main projects.  The writing one is to get Tales from Grey Station 9 completed, and it is very close now.  I really love this story.  The characters are all kinds of fun.  I am almost through with Part 9.  Only one more section to go.  I told my husband that I was going to regret being done with this one, and he reminded me that I said the same thing when I finished the first draft of the story.

The other massive project is the reworking of my ezine, Vision: A Resource for Writers.  I stopped publishing a couple years ago, but I still have over a thousand articles scattered about as archive material.  The last twenty or so issues had been published using a Joomla! base and I had started putting the back issues in as well.  However, Joomla! wanted me to do a major update right after I stopped publishing.  If the ezine were still in publication, it would have made sense -- but Vision is now static with no new additions.  I just kept ignoring it, but the version I am using is developing problems, so I have to do something.

I decided to take the entire collection back to a basic HTML site. That meant pulling 668 articles out of the Joomla! site plus gathering four to five hundred more from the original HTML site.  I've got the 668 copied out, and I've just started the other collection.  Once I get everything copied, I'll create a basic template and start setting everything up again.  Once I'm done, that will be it.  With no new articles, there will be no reason to update again.

This is a long process, though.  I'm about a quarter of the way through everything that needs to be done.  I hope to have it all finished by the end of the year.

Doing this work made me think about all the time and energy I've invested in helping other writers.  I took over Forward Motion for Writers so Holly wouldn't close it down in 2003.  The site is quiet now -- so many people find what they want on places like FB that it's difficult to get many things going there, though there is a very active goals section!  I'd been working with Holly Lisle at the site since 1998 -- so that's very close to 20 years dedicated to that site. 

I published Vision for about fourteen years.  That meant paying for the articles myself (though the early articles were all donated by many wonderful writers), plus doing the formatting and publishing.    Except for occasional donations, I've paid for the websites for both FM and Vision and have done a lot of the work, though I've had some help along the way and really appreciated it.

Then there is the Two Year Novel (2YN) Class which I've offered for free several times (this year it is on my FB author page). I sell the 8 2YN course books for $0.99 each, and they're pretty much available everywhere.  The NaNo for the New and the Insane is a free book on Smashwords and is still popular. 

I've had some wonderful thank you notes from people down through the years and even a couple book dedications. 

I have cut back on all the stuff I used to do.  I don't fret over FM and the lack of posts.  If people want to start writing-related conversations there, then they should leap in and have a good time.  I can't make people want to post, and for a few years that made me fret and worry and try to start things....

What changed?

The heart attack, I suspect, made me start thinking that I wanted to do things differently.  Even so, it's taken me a few years to back off from 'other' stuff and focus more on my writing again.  Oh, I didn't do badly before, but my focus wasn't always where it should be.  Now I have writing and photography with a bit of digital art thrown in.

And if I could just figure out how to sell more books, I'd be really happy.

But I won't fret about it!