Daily Prompt: State of Year – Sunny with bright spells and a threat of cloud.

So, this is my response to the Daily Prompt: Write up a mid-year “State of My Year” post.

Well, the state of my year is currently a mixed bag! It’s my birthday tomorrow, so I’m feeling particularly chipper and excited for the next few days to come. I’ve already been given the most thoughtful and touching birthday present, but I’ll be writing more about this at another time. All I can really say, are children are awesome and I love my little nieces and nephew to absolute bits. (Their parents are pretty amazing people as well!)

Perhaps this year needs a comparison to last year?  This July I have a different job to last year, and I love my job. I thoroughly enjoy wandering into work every morning and seeing where the day takes me. This time last year, I had several very close friends. This year, I’ve managed to maintain the majority of those friendships, but I’ve also gained the clichéd soul mate. Soul mate is a very strange term for me to use, I don’t consider myself to be a new-age hippy by any means. I mean quite like scented candles and walking barefoot, but I don’t want to live communally. But I’ve been very fortunate, that after a very very very verrrrry long wait, I found the right person. Or rather, we found each other. It’s very hard to put into words how happy I am in some areas of my life. A frustrating thing for a writer.

I’m also half way through a Master’s course in Creative Writing, and not only do I have one adorable and personality-filled kitten, I have two!

However, this time last year, I was elated that I had finished my manuscript. I was filled with buzzing enthusiasm and energy and determined to have my name in print. So far this year, I’ve been far more successful in my blog, and I’ve also completed a few other projects as a writer. As mentioned in a much earlier post, Rob and I co-wrote a murder mystery event for over twenty people. I am proud of our achievement.  However, so far this year, I’ve realised that the manuscript needs another of the endless re-writes and I’ve not managed to give it any time.

Writing is something too easy to side-line. It comes after the washing up, the laundry, the tidying. I comes after spending some quality time with friends and family and trying to keep friendships maintained. I can’t help but feel a knot of worry growing. I’ve been provided with an amazing opportunity to send my manuscript to a friend, who happens to be an editor. He may even recommend it to his friends who publish books – in my genre!  I can hardly bare thinking about it. I am currently so excited and so determined to give everything ‘my all’ but at the same time that I feel as though I’m (quite happily) running flat out on a treadmill, or down the road of life.  But if I don’t slow down soon, I’m going to miss an important turning.

New rules are needed. Writing needs to move up in my priority. Blogging is good for this, I’m forcing myself to blog something each day, even just a photo. But if I can take time out to write the blog, I should be taking time out to work on my manuscript – again.  I’ll set myself goals – this week, I will write 500 words of the new beginning. New words, not the words I’ve already started writing out.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

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