July is proving to be a lethargic month. I'm hardly moving forward at all and can't quite understand why. Perhaps it's the heat. Maybe the humidity, maybe I'm just waiting for when the kids go back to school and I have those few precious hours in the morning when it's me, the animals and absolute silence.

I have made some progress in areas of writing. I wrote a short story topping 8,000 words, which is a great accomplishment for me. And I have taken a red sharpie to those pages and marked them up with notes upon notes and have stretched that even farther by adding several pages onto the story. So all in all, I feel alright.

But not productive.

Reading is going slow. I'm juggling two books at once, which is very rare for me, but my mind just doesn't want to sit still and read. This is strange for me.

I'm hoping that August will brighten up the creative horizons, allowing me to dig deep into storytelling and run full-steam-ahead on the new novel. And, I hope that I will be able to relax enough in the evening to plow through the many novels I have lined up to read.

July, sweet July, it's time to fall behind me and wake up to a new and promising month.

~Jo