It seems like forever already since I moved to Virginia, but only now I finally feel that my mind and life are settling back into a routine. After rather perilous two months, I welcomed some steady productivity and progress, especially in my writing, even if it wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped to.
Writing
After finishing May being about 20,000 words behind for my yearly goal, I was looking forward to catching some serious words, and closing the gap.
Thankfully, just at the end of May, I came up with a very enticing idea for a dark fantasy story. I wasn’t sure whether it would be a novel or a novella, but I dove right in to get the core structure on the page. It’ll need a lot of rewriting later, but so far I’ve been enjoying putting it together.
I also worked on Myth-touched – the second book of my contemporary fantasy set in Ireland, steadily fleshing out the missing scenes, and on some side projects. Even though I didn’t manage to catch up with missing words, at least I didn’t add any more to the already-huge number. I wrote every day and I finished June with a little over 30,000 words written.
On top of that, I added some editing time, and hit another milestone: over 50 hours of editing for this year. It might seem little, but I usually don’t count some cosmetic changes or ad-hoc fixes.
I’m still 20,000 behind which means I haven’t reached the mid-year milestone for 365 Writing Club yet.
Art
Focused on catching up with writing, I didn’t do much art in June. I worked on some projects and did a few sketches, but none of them is ready to be shared.
I did, though, get to visit Virginia Museum of Fine Art. Their collections might not be huge, but the variety makes up for the amount. Especially the ancient art section: each room dedicated to one ancient country. It includes well-arranged rooms for Greece, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Egypt, China, Japan, and Korea, each having an interesting array of items and sculptures.
There was also a stunning art nouveau collection, and Russian collection that included some Faberge Eggs and Russian decorative arts on books and jewelry.
They’d taken us so much time, we were already tired going through the collection of American paintings, and we somewhat rushed through the beautifully arranged South Asian collection.
The visit was definitely inspiring, and I hope to go there again. Especially that Virginia’s Historic Society is next to it.
Life
Back in May, I made the first in a long time attempt to grow something. I took a bit of risk choosing pansies (since it wasn’t the time to sow them), but I couldn’t resist. If you follow me on social media, you might already know that despite the heat and torrential rain, my pansies keep growing. As for blooming – that’s really for July’s report, but there are already two flowers, and some more buds keep my hopes up.
Also, since I started doing a bit of a freelancing job, I had to sort out my freelancer status, and after few phone calls, an online application, and a letter sent, I’m a proud sole proprietor, complete with a business license. It does feel like an important step in my general settling in the US.
Other than that, my life’s been quiet, filled mostly with stories. How about you?
It sounds to me as if you are busy putting down roots – it’s always an important part of the process when moving somewhere new and folks neglect it at their peril. Because if you don’t take time and effort to find a niche for yourself within your new environment you won’t ever really feel settled… So your productivity is impressive! I hope you are enjoying life and look forward to hearing more about your writing projects in due course, Joanna:)
Thank you for your kind words, Sarah. You’re right about putting down roots, though it’s going to be a long process. It took me years back in Ireland (I guess moving around there didn’t help much).
It feels good, though, to be slowly getting back on track. (And since I’ll be doing a blog catch up again, expect some late comments from me 😉 .)
No worries – I know what it’s like, so whenever is just fine:))
It sounds like you’ve done a fair amount, 30,000 words is certainly nothing to sniff about!
Nicely done Melfka 🙂
I think I might have been over-ambitious setting my goal for this year. And too stubborn to lower it.
There’s still time to get through some of it, even if you don’t reach your goal you at least have something to aim for.
Indeed. And realistically, I can still catch up. Doing extra 5000 words a month isn’t that much of strain… Well, supposedly. 😀
Depends what else you got going on.
Is “eeeeeverythiiiiing” a valid answer? 😉
It could be, could be 😀
I just realized the email notification for this post had slipped far enough down my inbox that I’d forgotten it for a while. Oops. *lol*
30,000 words is still a lot, so even though you’re still behind in your annual goal, you’re still making progress. So that’s good. And I think I’ve seen your most recent pansy photos on Facebook – you must be so happy with how well they’re doing! I’m actually growing a tomato plant on my terrace at home, and…. well, it only has two tomatoes on it, but it’s thriving overall! (*lol*) I think the other flowers weren’t pollinated enough to develop much further.
Funny things those emails, aren’t they? If we don’t get to them immediately, they get forgotten…
I’m indeed happy with my pansies. They’ve grown really tall and resemble more some wild things rather than those low and orderly pansies you can buy as seedlings. 🙂
And tomatoes – wow! I’d like to try them next year (and maybe some herbs). We have two balconies, so even though they aren’t big, there should be enough space for a couple more boxes and planters, right? 😉