Exciting news!

I was accepted to the MIT program at UGA for next fall. I haven't been a student in almost ten years, so it will be an interesting transition.

For me as a writer, this is delightful news. I have always built and maintained my own websites, but now I'll have the technical know-how to design them from the bottom up. (Well, I will in two years.) My office is happy about it as well, since having a properly trained web designer in addition to a technical writer will look good to clients.

Will this mean less time for writing? Yes and no. Other things are going to be cut first - I'll be scaling back my video game addiction, to start, and we'll be having quite fewer home cooked meals that I spend an hour crafting. I still want to dedicate as much time to writing as my writing needs.

My husband is in the process of submitting proposals for a nonfiction book, and for the first time he is beginning to understand the sort of effort that goes into just writing query letters and working up the courage to try.

Updates at work

I feel uncomfortable writing at my office, even when I have permission (due to "downtime" and the nature of our business.) Mostly its the subject matter - romance novels are not exactly work safe. But there's also my need for solitude during writing.

I never had trouble writing essays in class, or on standardized tests, possibly because everyone else is engrossed in their work. But fiction is different. When I'm involved in my writing, I don't want anyone else to see it until I'm ready for them to see it. The process of writing for me is a messy one - drafts, scripts, and sections and chapters are all a muddle until I'm done. I don't mind someone looking after I'm finished (indeed, I want to share it with the universe) but not until I'm ready.

I have my own desk and wide open internet access at my office (giving me access to my drop box), but not my writing software. I am not allowed to use my own laptop without permission, not that I have a working laptop at the moment.

So I am going to have to get in the habit of writing the moment I get home, since it won't happen any other time.

Life suddenly gets busy again

For over a year, I was a mere housewife, with no more responsibility to deal with than writing a couple thousand words a day and then coming home and cooking dinner.

That ended when I suddenly landed a "dream job" - only it's not what many people would call a dream job, but it is what I really wanted to do all along (besides be a writer and/or work for NASA.) I'm now a network technician for a small IT company, and my days are busy busy busy with unfortunately no more morning writing sessions.

Add to this the fact that my beloved Wuffi, my Acer Aspire One netbook, developed a sudden allergy to Windows. Multiple attempts to resuscitate it failed, and although it is happily swimming along with an Ubuntu Linux Netbook installation, I'm certain it's living on borrowed time. And the software I use to write on with, yWriter, is still fairly buggy in its Linux environment, making actual writing nearly impossible.

So! New job means less time to write. Dead netbook means nothing to write on outside my main PC, which is fine but which also entails all the distractions of home.

My writing hasn't completely ground to a halt, but I'm finding myself facing days where writing 100-200 words is a challenge.

Things will change soon, though. Since I have a job again, I have disposable income of my own again as well. A new laptop will be mine in short order! And no mere netbook this time. While it was nice to stuff a laptop into my purse, I'll take a large, fully featured 17" monitor this next go round.

Additionally, for my job, I had to upgrade my phone. All those query letters sent out with my old phone number... *sigh* Oh well, all the more reason to start hammering out new query letters with my NEW telephone number on them! My new phone also has a qwerty keyboard on it, so when I'm incredibly bored I can pop off those 100-200 words.

Maybe.

Out of the Blue

Suddenly I find myself employed again.

Fortunately, it is absolutely nothing related to writing, and I have the afternoons off to go and write in Barnes & Noble. (Yay part time!) In fact, after being active in the mornings, I actually want to go write, since I'm not actually wasting time on the internet or anything during the day.

Then I just have to make myself come home and fire off some queries and I've met my checklist for the day.

I'm glad I did my writing away from home, because there was a nicely worded rejection in my inbox. So it goes.

Sometime, an agent will fall in love with me. Until then, I'll keep querying - and keep writing.