Life
As most of you probably know, this month was our first with the newest addition to our family—our third child, baby Malachi. Unsurprisingly, it was a month filled with joy and stress and sleeplessness, but I am happy to say the little guy is doing very well. Being near my family has been an enormous blessing during this time, and my mother-in-law also came out to visit for a week, allowing us some additional time for some much-needed rest. Overall, it has definitely been the smoothest first month of life of any of our children.
School is going well. The content is very interesting and the pace is pretty intense, but I’ve managed to keep my head above water with it in spite of my busy home life. I was also accepted into the professional program that I had applied for, which will start at the end of May this year. This was an enormous weight off my shoulders, as I have been stressing about it for months. Now all I have to do is buckle down and do the work—something I am very excited for.
My eldest turned 5 this month as well and has been officially enrolled for kindergarten this fall. He’s been in preschool for a bit over a year now, so I have no doubt he’s ready for what’s next, but it is still crazy seeing how big he’s gotten and how fast it has seemed to happen. Sometimes I wonder if these monthly updates are all the keeps me aware of how much time is passing by.
Writing
As I’d hoped during my last post, I was able to do a little work on my writing this month. It wasn’t anything massive—no new short stories ready to send out (although I am working on one), but it was good for me to be able to spend some time on it around everything else that is going on.
Going into this month, I knew I had to find a way to feel satisfied with the writing that I was getting done without being able to put up massive word counts on any kind of regular basis. Though there are some days where I make progress, it isn’t consistent enough to build up the kind of momentum and habit that I rely on when drafting anything longer than a short story. What I ended up deciding to do was to work on worldbuilding for a setting that I hope to work on more in the future.
Some of you read Chasing Light, a short story I completed several months ago. When I wrote it, I was very excited about the setting and wanted to do a novel (or a trilogy) there, but didn’t know exactly what the plot would be or anything about the larger situation of that world. So I spent a bit of time this month working on the big pieces for that setting and the narrative I am going to tell there. As always, I am not quite sure when actually writing these stories is going to fit into my schedule, but I will definitely keep you all updated as things go forward.
I’m afraid I don’t have much else to report for this month. Thank you for reading and I will see you all next month (or sooner, if I manage to finish this other blog post I am working on).
Sincerely,
L.A. Morton-Yates