Because I’m always looking for excuses to blog more and because I don’t always remember to put personal updates on Twitter, I’m going to try something new to me: a Quarterly Update. Although the information I’ll include each quarter will likely change from time to time, it should (hopefully) provide a broader overview of what I’ve been up to in the last three months. That said, I definitely started this post before COVID-19 blew up, so at present, the only things I’m doing are adjusting to my new work from home routine and my new home and trying not to go stir crazy while we’re all stuck in quarantine.
Let’s get started, shall we?
General Updates
I’ve previously blogged here about my spouse’s and my upcoming move, which I thought we’d have at least half of this year to prepare for. The joke was on me though, because after 2+ years of occasional leaks, a water pipe inside our ceiling froze and then burst, flooding the main room of our apartment and causing the ceiling to collapse in two different places.
That was in mid-January. Since then, we have:
1) Moved everything we own to another unit within the same complex on the same weekend that a snow and ice storm rolled through town.
2) Gotten rid of a chunk of our living room furniture, plus a few other things which were all too water damaged to keep.
3) Convinced our landlord to let us out of our lease early–the end of March in our case–and promptly began getting our things in order so we could leave.
4) Sorted our belongings into two camps–the stuff going into storage and the stuff coming with us to our new place–and re-packed or packed everything.
5) Moved out of the apartment complex where we’ve lived for the last 5.5 years and in with a friend in a neighboring town. We’re renting a room in her home for the time being while we figure out the next steps in our move out of state, and though this whole situation was a logistical nightmare that I would never again want to relive, it’s also an incredible relief to be OUT. Good riddance to bad landlords.
Also happening in the middle of our moving preparations? WriteOnCon! This online kidlit conference is one I’ve looked forward to for months and meant to attend for years, but I was hardly able to attend any of the live events while they were happening because I was so freaking busy with packing and other things. Thankfully, though, I’d prepaid for access to all conference content for a month after the conference itself ended, which means I’ve had plenty of time to watch all the webinars and read all the group discussions and posts and podcast transcripts that caught my eye. And there are a lot of them.
If you’re a kidlit writer who can’t afford/doesn’t have time to go to an in-person conference *raises hands high*, you definitely want to check this one out. The prices are super reasonable–I paid $15 dollars for my extended admission–and there’s a ton of great information available about writing, revising, marketing, and the publishing industry as a whole. Even if you can’t spend much time in the forums meeting and critiquing other writers, which I unfortunately could not, it is still well worth attending.
What I’ve been Writing
The zero draft of my YA thriller manuscript, which I finally finished! Given how rough the last three months have been, the fact that I managed to reach ‘the end’ feels like a major accomplishment all by itself.
What else I’ve been working on
I went full on Marie Kondo on my apartment this quarter–one advantage to being so swiftly and suddenly displaced. My husband and I have been steadily decluttering for a while now, but we got rid of a bunch after our surprise move, and it felt fantastic. I also tackled several small, irritating projects concerning my belongings, such as getting my car fixed and a pair of shoes re-lined and fixing the hinges on a storage chest that my grandfather made. It’s good to have all this stuff taken care of, but I have to tell you. My goal for the next quarter is to spend as little time dealing with my belongings as I possibly can.
On a lighter note, I also took my first calligraphy class in February in preparation for a personal project that I want to tackle, and that provided a lovely reprieve from the stress and hard work of planning another move.
Five Favorite Reads
1) We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia
2) The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
3) Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett
4) The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
5) With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
What’s Next?
With one move behind us, it’s time to really dive in and do more targeted research regarding where, specifically, we want to live once we leave the state. Because we’ve already narrowed our location to one city, our ongoing goal is to decide on a handful of neighborhoods we’ll want to visit and explore on our next trip there. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic and the self-isolating we’ve all had to do means that I have no idea when that trip will actually be.
I also need to come up with a revision plan for my YA thriller manuscript so I don’t flounder (too much) once my self-imposed one month vacation is up and I start back in on the story.
# of Books Read to Date: 22
# of Rejections Received to Date: 11
What have you been up to this quarter? Leave me a comment and let me know.
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