If I was the sort of person who rated my months (and apparently I am) I’d give this one a solid 4* review for the following reasons:
1. Spring has properly sprung, as evidenced in my A Year in the Woods post, and I feel far more like myself than I have for a long time.
2. Not only have I crocheted some lovely things (and received my first paid commission) but I’ve finally got a tablet I can use to create digital art and I’ve had a lot of fun with it so far. If you’re curious, you can see most of it here.
3. I received my first COVID 19 vaccine shot and although I felt truly dreadful for 48 hrs afterwards I am so grateful to be on the path to being able to see other people again with a clear conscience.
4. The first of the four blog posts on writing I’ve offered to contribute to Get Your Words Out, the writing group I belong to, went up on their dreamwidth page and was well received. Since it’s members only I can’t post a link to it there but I will be able to put it up on here in the next month or so. I’ve also realised I never put the ones I wrote last year on here either so I’ll have to get that sorted when I have a minute!
5. Line of Duty is back and judging by the first two episodes it looks like it’s going to be another damn fine one season will keep me guessing and on the edge of my seat every Sunday night. I also spent a significant number of evenings leading up to the first episode rewatching the first five seasons which definitely boosted my mood (and made me want to sacrifice many things to the gods in order to be able to write a script the way Jed does but we won’t mention that again).
6. I’ve now got three draft short stories sitting in my notebook, thanks to Susan Dennard’s story-a-month challenge, and all of them fill me with joy. Not only has the challenge reinvigorated my writing (I’d been so wrapped up in my novels I’d stopped playing with ideas that weren’t tied to them) I’ve realised there’s a theme tying them all together that I’d like to explore further and possibly has the makings of an anthology. Regardless of what I end up doing, it’s made such a difference to the words coming out of my fingers and I’m truly grateful for it.
Next month brings not only Easter and my birthday but a deadline for a short story I pitched to an anthology way back in November last year. I’ve been working on it on and off since then and – as so often happens when I pitch an idea rather than a finished piece – it has changed significantly from what I envisaged at the beginning. However the core of the idea remains in tact and the new outline feels much more honest than the original so I’m hoping that as I start the rewrite, it will grow and shape itself into something I can be proud of. As alway, though, only time (and the editor) will tell!
Kizzia Mildmay 