A Look Back at 2017

Hello again. Sorry for this going quiet but, in the long run, this is the ball that gets dropped first in my life. It's not out of malice, but something that just is a natural consequence of wanting to get other things in life done. However, I thought that I would take a look back at the good and, while not bad, the things that I wasn't the most proud of. I don't want to use the word bad because... they're not. It's not a bad thing that things didn't get done or goals didn't get accomplished, it just is. It happened, let's get back on track to make 2018 better, and move on. If you keep on beating yourself up over things that have already happened, then you're never going to move forward. So, in the spirit of that, we're going to move forward on what I got done, what didn't get done, and how I feel about it.

What Got Done:

• I won my 10th NaNoWriMo. While the project itself isn't finished, I'm still proud that I started it and that I have an idea of the overall world. It is very much a telling myself the story type draft at the moment and I am more than okay with that.
• I am at the farthest of my editing in Mystery of the Dark than I thought I would be. I'm slowly getting the entire thing edited and sent back and 2018 will be the publishing year. It has to be. I'll talk about this more in the second section.
• The sequel for Mystery of the Dark is slowly being written. The 3rd book is completely done and just needs plot tweaking. I know what I'm doing for the 4th and 5th book, even somewhat the 6th and 7th. The entire series is plotted out with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th book having titles - Slight of Hand, Flash of Fang, Song of Siren - that correspond to what supernatural being is focused on in each book as well as the overall plot arc too.
• I moved! It's a whole suburb over but I am walking a ton more (ok, not now, it's winter and FREEZING in the Midwest). I call this a what got done because it feels really good.
• I have released over 100 pounds and working on the next 70 more to get to my overall goal.

Okay, next section. Those four are really good and awesome and shouldn't be swept aside. Let's talk about what didn't get done.

What Didn't Get Done:

• Mystery of the Dark to the publishing stage. Yes, this is on me and I completely understand that but, at the same time... I don't think I was ready. Every time I thought of publishing, I got scared shitless and dragged my feet even more with editing. So, yeah, I wasn't ready and it's good to get that off my chest. However, this is going to be a 2018 goal and we'll get more into that with the 2018 goals post that will go up on Monday.
• I haven't lost enough weight. This is more of a funny, because I've released over 100 pounds (not all last year, but you know, total) but I feel like I've been going slower at it. So I'm going to strengthen my Bright Lines (feel free to go Google) and get back to food journaling.
• My areas of the house are unorganized. Sure, the majority of the boxes are gone but not all of them. My drawers are a mess, there are clothes that I should donate, so on and so forth. Also, I might need to go rearrange my bedroom because my head is up by a window (did I mention it's cold here?!) or possibly move all of my things into the basement to have an own apartment type space. We'll see. The basement is huge and my work area is down there.

So, yeah, things didn't get done, but other things did! I think the entire series being completely plotted and four out of six / seven books being titled is awesome. I think losing all the weight I have is awesome. I have been awesome this year and I need to focus on that. I also need to move forward, which might be my 2018 phrase with forward being my word, and that's what I'm going to do. One foot in front of another, picking myself up when I fall, and not beating myself up so much. It'll be a slow journey but I hope you stick with me to see where we go in the crazy year of 2018.

Happy New Year and see you on Monday! Happy writing and/or editing.

The Other Part of Me

I had to think long and hard about writing this post.  It's not because it's too personal but I don't really talk about this.  I answer questions when people ask about it, because I don't mind when outright asked, but I don't offer up this information about me often.  It's because, even though I've lived with this all my life, I don't like it.  It is not a part of me that I'm proud of but more of one I tolerate.

I consider this the secondary part of me, and how it works with being a writer.  I've talked about my writer journey and there's a bit on my About Me page, but I think a proper post is in order.  You know the first part - Elizabeth Szubert, the writer.  The poet.  The person who started with writing fanfiction because she needed time to create her own worlds.

Here's the other part of me - legally blind person.  I have retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, that is slowly destroying my vision.  I am night blind at night, which is exactly as it sounds, and I have days where it hurts to sit at my computer and write.  It's known as a glare problem.  However, what makes me legally blind is the fact that I only have about 12 degrees of my field vision left which is known as tunnel vision.

Yeah.  To get an idea of how that is, cup your hand around your eye.  It's a lot less than what I have, but that's what it is like.  Since I use a red tipped cane, as a blind person does, that's the first thing you're going to know about me before I even introduce myself.  Truthfully?  I hate it, because I am more than this one thing about me.  However, you will not believe how it parts crowds like the Moses vs the Red Sea sometimes.  Welcome to my mild morbid humor, pull up a chair.  It's only here on good days but that's for another post about writing and mental stability.

However, it makes life as a writer harder.  I don't know what it's like to drive a car or do maintenance on one.  Thank everything for Google because it is the one thing that doesn't care what you ask.  I know that some of my writing is stunted because I don't know what it's like to act as someone with good vision.  It is one of the reasons that I edit as much as I do and ask others for editing help.  I do have other problems with my writing, as all writers do, but the one I'm always worried about if I am portraying someone with normal vision correctly.  I know that someone's going to read this and go "why?" but... it's a quirk of mine.  Everyone has something that they worry about while writing and this is one of mine.

So that's the other part of me.  Maybe I'll open up about it more in the future.  For right now, it's just there.  I hate that sometimes I struggle with writing because of it, but it is what it is.  If I don't laugh, I'll cry.

Readers, what is your struggle?  What seems to define you before you can even say "I'm a writer/author"?  Feel free to comment and, from me to you, a big giant hug.  We're more than the assumptions that people make, all of us, and hearing or writing that makes it more real.