Life Beyond Writing

Believe it or not, I do have a life outside of my writing. I almost never talk about - mostly because it's so boring it's almost lethal. But it seems that it may soon be intruding upon my writing, more than it already does. The last thing I want is another "hiatus" the likes of which I took late last year; it was well into February of this year before I could get myself out of that idle state, and as a writer, down time of that length is wasted time.

I will finally be graduating from college early this May. It's been an effort a long time in the making. I started classes in fall of 2002, attended a year, then took a year off. Then I went back for the fall of 2004. After that, I did 4 years in the Navy, and wasn't able to get back to classes until fall of 2009. But now, finally, I'm a month from being done.

I also have some job opportunities opening up. Right now, the plan is to go back to work in my usual summer job, but there may be other opportunities as well. They're in the works. Suffice it to say that the entire month of May is probably going to be a no-go for writing, simply because I'll be so busy traveling around the country on trips related to school and work, and I'll be attending work-related classes and courses.

All this to say, if I drop off the face of the earth in May, don't worry, I'll be back.

If you've been keeping an eye on my project tracker, you'll see I've been making some slow progress on "Abyss." I'm still working on it, and I hope to get some more writing done on it this afternoon. I've got a ton of ideas for it; the challenge now is to make them fit together into something that is both interesting and coherent without getting bogged down in all the little details. And that, my friends, is what I have trouble with in my writing: avoiding detail overload. It's a common problem among writers who are struggling to make the transition from amateur hobby writers into published professionals, but it's a heck of a problem to get fixed. Especially when every detail I come up with is "just so interesting." Hopefully I can learn some thing with "Abyss."

More as it happens.