Progress Report

Friday the Thirteenth is probably a strange choice as a day to update you all (the non-Texican version of y’all) on how I am doing as a writer.  As a teacher, I would never give tests or graded assignments on Friday of Friggatriskaidekaphobia-fame because too many kids would bomb it just because the the stupid superstition still persists in our society.  But I am decidedly science-minded.  I know with absolute certainty that I am bound to fail more than I succeed, and one day in the very near future I will curl up my metaphorical toes and go metaphorically bye-bye.  So I might as well be perfectly honest about where I stand at present.

As a parent, I have to to be better than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.  I have dealt with bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, and severe depression in both my work as a teacher and as a parent of three.  I have to be good at putting Humpty together again.  For the time being, the eggs are all now puzzled back together.

As a story-teller, my novel Snow Babies has now been completed and edited.  The publisher is now in the process of turning the thing into an actual book.  Not much more is standing in the way of me being the author of three published novels (and potentially two of them that are actually good).

As a blogger, I now have only 48 more days to go to reach my goal of posting every single day of 2015.  I have actually become a better writer by doing this, and these blogs are now a rich source of material for future projects, should I be lucky enough to survive for a while longer and do them.

My NaNoWriMo novel, When the Captain Came Calling, now stands at 17,000 words with 17 days left to reach the 50,000.  (Hey, I know it is not possible to actually get that far, but the competition is driving my progress forward after spinning my wheels through September and October.)

The painting above (Story-Teller of Skye Lodge) is making progress too, though you can see there is still a long way to go to complete it, especially once I layer in all the intricate designs in the dream-tale background.

So, that is my current report card.  I’m not clearly acing it, but I am also not failing.