On The Road Again

 For someone who loves to wander, this past year and a half has been most trying. My introverted nature became even more so, and my usual tactics of getting out and exploring in order to stretch myself went by the wayside. But now, fully vaccinated, I'm ready to hit the road again. 

I've had a "new to me" car since last October and the longest trip I've made in it so far has been the twelve mile round trip to the nearest grocery store. It's time we both stretched our wings a bit.

So, shortly, I'm hitting the road with one of my sisters, heading to Ohio for a few days to see everyone that I can cram into four days' time. It'll be a quick up and back, but will give me enough time to feel like things are slowly returning to a new normal. We're packing food so we will be limiting our exposure on the road, and will wear our masks as much as possible. But we'll at least be taking the first steps to what used to be routine. Maybe I'll even encounter my next story idea while on the road. 

Wish me happy trails!

Summertime in Ohio

As most of you know, I've got a couple more weeks to be housebound wearing my brace and walking around in a nightgown, since that's the only thing that fits. My inactivity was beginning to wear on me, until yesterday. That's when the outdoor furniture finally got carried up out of the basement and the screened porch was put together. I now can sit out on the porch with my computer, working while I'm watching the birds in the yard, and inhaling the scent of freshly mown grass. It certainly has done wonders for my psyche.

Which is a good thing, since I'm going through my checklist on my latest work, trying to polish it up. The checklist is the most tedious part of writing, as far as I'm concerned, since it's not creating a new story, but rather finessing and fine-tuning the work you've just put on the screen. And my checklist just got longer, thanks to some courses I've recently taken, but in the end, I'll have a contemporary work I'm proud of. 100 pages down, 135 yet to go. And at least three more read-throughs before I'm done.

I have a lot of events on the schedule for June and July, which will cut into my writing time. But I'll get to see people I haven't seen in years, I get to tour a part of the country I haven't spent much time in, which I plan to use as a backdrop for another story, and I get to end July at RWA Nationals in New York. Who knows what plot lines I'll find?