With the start of school within the next two weeks, I am starting to return to my day job. There is a part of me that is grateful. I have missed my day job and my students. I have missed being able to work with them. My year will look very different compared to last year. It will be filled with more responsibility, more challenges, and a bigger chance for burn out. This all means I have gone into prep mode. I have spent my first week back at work trying to prepare for anything and everything. I have to try to find enough work, games, and rewards for my student. I have had to plan for the worse cases scenario and with a special needs kid that can be difficult. I have even had to look at how to deal with any behavioral issues. The way I would normally handle them, I can’t due to covid restrictions within the school.

All of this means I have spent my week on my day job and not as much on writing. I am trying to get back into the swing of things of getting up at four thirty, working out, writing, doing my social media, and going to work. The problem is, it is difficult to do that when you haven’t had to in five months. I am finding it rather difficult to get up on time and get everything done before I head to work. I am sure that it will get easier but right now I am feeling like it is impossible. The bright side of all of this is I am starting to feel like I am finding my footing with the writing I am doing. I am starting to see where the book is going, which makes life so much easier when I do sit down and write. It is making me hopeful for this book. There are still moments that I want to start over on book 6. I was talking to an author friend about the struggles I am feeling with writing for the last several months. I have realized a few things that I have done wrong. The first is I didn’t take a week off before starting this book. Normally, I take time off to rest, almost like a mental vacation, instead I jumped into this book because I was drowning in my emotions.

The other misstep was I should have moved over to my other series. It would have given me time to process a few things about The Hellborn Series and seen my path more clearly. The last thing came from my friend, Tim. I was telling him how much I was struggling to finish this book. There are parts of it that are very good. The writing is spot on and we are learning more about other characters. With that said, there is a lot that needs work and I want to throw the book away and start over. Tim reminded me of my own advice when I was talking to him. Just keep writing. Keep going until the book is finished. Once it is done you can go back and fix all of the issues within the book. He is right and it is the same thing I have told all of you. I just needed the reminder that it will all be fine once I get the book finished and I start editing it. Editing is a task we all bitch about but in some ways it is therapeutic. It is how we right all of our wrongs and missteps. It is how we take something that may be ugly and make it beautiful.

So I am going to keep this blog short this week. I am hoping to get some writing done before I start my work week. Don’t be afraid of taking time to reflect on where you may have gone wrong. Embrace your mistakes and learn from them. Keep pushing until you get to the end and then you can fix your mistakes. Until next time!