I've written and rewritten this post a few times. Not because it was terrible, but because things kept changing and I didn't want to leave anything out. Hopefully, the third time is the charm.
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At the end of last year, I spent a great deal of time coming up with my plans and goals for 2019. They were reasonable, manageable, and reachable.
But 2019 had an agenda of its own.
Due to some setbacks with the online business my husband and I own, I had to give up my part-time employment for a new full-time job. I was concerned about how it would affect my writing, but somehow managed to squeeze in words on lunch breaks and other spare moments. Since my writing time was reduced, I had to push my next release back. Not once, not twice, but multiple times until I couldn't push it back any further. Because of the timeline of the story, and subsequently the series, publishing it in 2019 wasn't going to be possible anymore.
This, of course, was beyond frustrating to me. The excitement for this year faded and I was suddenly back to the drawing board. What should I write next? I played around with a few ideas, wrote part of a couple of them, but nothing was sticking. For some reason, I was unable to invest my energy into these stories. They were all good ideas, some that I loved dearly, but I wasn't ready for them. Or maybe they weren't ready for me, I still haven't figured that out yet.
I sat down and wrote up a list of every idea I have come up with over the last few years. There are currently 25 ideas on this list (and I'm pretty sure I'm missing several). I'd look over it and consider each idea, each series, and ponder over what it would take to complete the story or stories. Do I have enough of the story figured out? Or do I have to spend a lot of time plotting and developing characters before I can even get started? Most of the ideas are part of a series and would require some world building and character connecting before I could even begin. Some have such a vague premise that it would take months to flesh out.
It seemed hopeless until I thought about a more recent idea. A standalone. One that has a much different feel than my other stories, but is still a romance.
I started a word document, wrote the title and character names, then began to write a rough outline of what happens. In the midst of this, I discovered a few things I would need to research. It felt a bit daunting at first, but I looked something up and realized that it won't be as difficult as my brain tried to tell me it would be. Then every night I would think about the way the story would progress and eventually came up with a great ending to the story, which made me feel more positive about moving forward with this story.
While I've been facing some setbacks, at least I've been able to come up with a new plan. As far as the rest of 2019 goes, that's still up in the air for a number of reasons, but I'm working on it. One day at a time.
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Thank you for reading this post! I would love to hear from you. Have you had changes in 2019 that you weren't anticipating? What have you been able to do to overcome them?
