Writer Down

Hi guys!

Gonna be honest here, I didn't have a topic planned for today, so fair warning that this might turn into a ramble.

Ok? Moving on.

If you missed the celebration on Facebook and Instagram, I finished the first draft of The Mad Hatter. It's about 55K, and I'm just super happy to be done with it at this point so I don't have to think about it.

That being said, by the time I wrote The End I was feeling much more confident in the story, and I think I'll be able to polish it into something I love after I've had a break from in.

As usually happens after I finish a story, all the wind has gone out of my sails for writing. I've got to whip an article into shape for Story Embers and I'm just sitting here like ... I'm a writer?

Writer down!

Me, with my writing obligations in the background.

But that's actually ok with me (apart from needing to turn in that one article). I need this time after a draft to recharge and do other things. Like read The Raven Boys, because I got to the part where Blue sees Gansey, and Gansey hears his voice on the recorder, and stopped. The suspense is killing me.

It's also been absolutely beautiful outside. Almost to the point of being hot. I've spent the bare minimum of time indoors, and Henry and I have been out playing with Finn and Scout, building forts, and generally soaking in the sun.

We've also been branding calves about every other day. I think we've done around 400 so far, give or take, so we're a little over the halfway mark.

Branding calves is super fun to me, so I've really been enjoying that.

All that niceness is about to come to a screeching halt though, because the weather men have the audacity to predict another Bomb Cyclone moving in tonight and tomorrow. I'm really praying we can just skip all that. It's not good for anything go from 70 and sun to 20 and snow.

I've got a sunburn right now and I'm digging out my winter coat. This is ridiculous.

In all seriousness though, say a prayer for Nebraska please. We really don't need hit with anything else right now. During my hiatus from writing Henry and I went with Rosie to drive along the river and see some of the devastation now that the water is down. You would not believe the trash that washed in. Entire trees, piles of cornstalks, sand. Entire fences are absolutely gone, and there were places we couldn't get to because the road was washed out so bad.

It was terrible.

Nebraska, next time it rains

Now that it's been a grand total of three days since finishing Mad Hatter, there is a tiny sliver of my brain that wants to think about what I'm going to do next.

I've been toying around with a Viking idea, which isn't ready to be wrote yet, but I'm having fun gathering ideas.

The reality is most likely going to be rewriting. Kara Swanson and I have been looking over Blood and Dust and we think it just needs a little extra something to it, so I'm going to try to figure that out. And once I do that, it'll be time to do something about Bad Boy--first and foremost is to give it a real title.

So that's what I've been up to. I'm off to try and finish my article and get back to business.

What about you?

I do not own any of the Gifs. All came from Google.