If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen memes about how 2020 delivers countless plot twists without being bothered with logic and structure of a story. In that vein, it delivered one to me, and though it wasn’t one of the curve balls it seems to have in an endless supply, my third quarter of the year still ended up under its heavy influence.

Life

We weren’t planning to move this year, especially not during pandemic-related restrictions, but with our lease ending and issues with our complex management piling up, we made that decision. In hindsight, it was a good one: we moved a nicer and quieter place with reasonable rent. At the same time it meant packing, unpacking, cleaning, and organizing that took a lot of my last three months.

Then, there was the struggle of getting back to the routine, trying to catch up with everything, and I felt like I have done little.
Yet, that isn’t entirely true.

Writing

Even though my writing stalled a bit during the summer months, I still managed to finish Memories of Sorcery and Sand, probably the most challenging novel I’ve written so far. The first feedback suggests it’s going to be worth all the work that’s still ahead of me, and even though I don’t think I’ll be able to work on it this year, I’m looking forward to it.

There are other things happening behind the scenes. I wish I could talk about them more, but there are still a few things to wrap up.

On the sadder note, Shadows over Kaighal, book 3 of my epic fantasy remains unfinished, even though I was hoping to have it done before the previous quarter had even started. At least getting it done by the end of the year seems realistic enough, so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Art

With the chaos of the move, my mind wasn’t on writing, but I tried to stay creative. I was learning new digital painting techniques and did a mini-series of witches designs. I tried different techniques, colored some of the last year’s Inktober witches, recreated one of the Wordwitch drawing, and—what’s most important—I had a lot of fun. I wish I could do more designs-wise, but writing comes first. One day, though, I’ll hopefully catch up with everything, freeing up more time for visual creativity.

With the last stretch of the year, I’m hoping to catch up on all the important things and wrap up some of the plans I had for the year, preparing for the next one—hopefully less hectic and unpredictable than 2020.

How was your summer? Did you make a lot of progress on your projects or did you struggle to get things done?