A Light Through the Darkness

It’s the beginning of a new year, and one I’m hoping is better than last year. No, one I will MAKE better than next year.

I’m recommitting to several things – my goal to get healthy; my writing; and myself. Yes, I’m going to be enforcing my time to get better. I can’t take care of others at the expense of myself. I need to remember that.

Work is going to be VERY busy in the next month – my day job is in the financial sector, and it’s the tax season. Which means I need to be healthy, so I can work the hours I need to. In addition, I’m getting ready to publish Winter Secrets, which means I’ll be writing a lot, because well, I need to finish the rewrite by January 31. I’m also going to be doing at least weekly updates here (more if I can, but I’m only committing to weekly) so that I can keep all you lovely folks in the loop!

I’m not doing resolutions this year, but I have made out my business plan for the year, and I have three books to write:

• The rewrite of Winter Secrets, which will be published in May
• The first draft of Deep Waters, the first Pendragon novel
• The first draft of Resonant Frequencies

I’ll have more on that later. I’m also going to be at ConCarolinas and Balticon in the early summer, and some others maybe later in the year.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.

You know, it’s been a LONG winter.  Maybe not GRRM long, but longer than I wanted.  Much longer than I wanted.

But it’s finally warm out.  The snow is gone and there is music in the morning when I go out.  I’m still adjusting to my work schedule, but it’s getting easier.  I’m not fighting it as much.  Now, of course, I have allergies, but I’ll take allergies over snow pants, seriously.

I’m still sort of on crutches, although I’m not using them very much.  I go back to the doctor’s on the 30th, and hopefully they’ll finally give me the go-ahead to stop using them fully.  I’m walking on May 5 in a charity walk, for MS research, and I will be damned if I do it on crutches!  But hey, if I have to, I have to.

Writing is going good – I’m working on the rough draft for Deep Waters, the 2nd Pendragon Casefiles novella.  The first one, Into Thin Air, is on schedule to be released at Balticon, and I’m hoping to have copies soon for reviewers.  Want to review it?   Drop me a line at val at vg-ford.com and let me know!

I’m also working on FaeryTale Princess again.  I’m really liking this story, and my writer’s group is intrigued.  Also, at this point, the hero is kind of an ass.  Which is fun to write.  Don’t worry, he won’t always be.  It’s sort of a romance, after all!

I’ll have cards for my proofreading business and swag from Lake Knight Paranormal (the ghost hunting group in Pendragon) at Balticon.  I might even read from the first novella!

So yeah, life is looking up.  I find it usually does in the spring.  I just wish it wouldn’t take so darn long to get here.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.

I’m still writing.  As of today, I’ll have written for 138 days in a row.  I haven’t missed a day, not even through Harper’s Retreat, or the ick that I was sick with, or anything else.  I still wrote, even if it was only 250 words

I still wrote.  I showed up to the page.

I was thinking about this last night – showing up, I mean.  I stayed late at work, because I was at the end of the first Inspector Lynley mystery (yes, I’m addicted to British murder mysteries.  No, I have no idea [MOM] why.) and I had to read to the end.  By the time I was done, it was 8:45 pm.

I had fully intended to go to the gym to swim, but the gym was a good 10 minutes away, and the pool was only open until 9:30 pm.  Was it really worth it?  I almost didn’t go.

But then I realized that I needed to show up.  I’d made that commitment, and I wasn’t going to just blow it off, the way I had before.  So I went to the gym.  By the time I got changed and made it into the pool, I only had about 10 minutes to swim.

I swam for that full ten minutes, folks.  I showed up to the page, because even though I only had ten minutes, it was more than I would have done if I’d gone home.

That’s why now, when people tell me “I have no time to write,” what I realize they’re saying is “I don’t have time to write 1000 words, or four chapters, or whatever.”  250 words takes me about 15 minutes.  Everyone has 15 minutes, 20 minutes.  So what if you only get 100 words, or 50 words.  It’s more words than you had before, right?

Okay, enough lecturing.  On to the updates.

I’m still working on Into Thin Air – I’m in the final chapter (not counting the epilogue).  This chapter is the one that needs the most work, because I wussed out the ending, to be perfectly honest, and my crit group called me on it.  I am still planning on having this done by the end of September, and then I can start working on the third Advent story.  That’s my Nano project.

Also, I’m going to be doing two events in October!  I’ll be in Gardner, Mass on October 2nd, at the library, doing a NaNo Prep lecture at 7 pm.  And the weekend of October 10th, I’ll be at CapClave in DC.  I can’t wait!

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.

I hate Daylight Savings time.  Just sayin’.

Also, I can’t update my website from work.  Nor can I look at Pinterest anymore (dammit!) and I can’t read my G+ stream.  I can post from my Google Reader to my G+ stream (don’t ask, our firewall is WEIRD) and I do have my phone, so I might hop on Twitter or Facebook from work on break, but it’s not a lways on.  So please, don’t think I’m ignoring you.  I’m not – I’m just busy.

However, I’m finally starting to settle into a routine.  I’m getting ready for Balticon (yay!) – I’ll be helping run the Needleworker’s Tea there again, and we’ll be launching Spells and Swashbucklers – with pirates!  And rum!  I’m also doing a LOT of crocheting – lots of babies coming this spring!  It was a fertile late summer/early fall, apparently.

Finally, I’m writing.  I’ve done my daily pages for 44 days straight so far, and I’m working on several projects.  Forgotten, mostly, but some other things as well that I’m pretty stoked about.  More later, as I can.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.

I have had an ephiphany.

I have these once in a while, and while I’ve heard they are supposed to be wonderfully uplifting and illuminating, mine tend to be more of the clue-by-four to the forehead kind. And this really was. It was the result of several conversations from the past few weeks, and the diagnosis of my migraines as stress-related (I know, shocking, huh?). Mostly, though, it was me realizing that despite everything, I wasn’t happy.


Writing used to make me happy. Writing used to be a joy. Now, it has been a chore, or worse, something to dread. I hate that. I love to write.


I work 40 hours a week, with an hour commute each way. My job is very demanding, because I’m working with people’s money, their retirement savings, and given the markets recently, it’s been a bit….challenging. It’s not a job that I can sit back and wing through. It’s exhausting. I used to come home, though, determined to write, because that’s what writers, REAL writers, do, right? And then I’d write about 250 words of crap, delete it later, feel like a failure because all the other writers I know are churning out words, and books, and stories, and they’ve got them up on Kindle, and are getting agents and deals and even if they aren’t doing any of that, they’re actually FINISHING things, which I haven’t done in months….and it was a downward spiral. And then the clue-by-four hit.

I don’t have to do what they do.

You have no idea how freeing that statement was. I don’t have to pursue agents. I don’t have to publish to Kindle, or Smashwords. I don’t have to go to cons, and promote.

I can just write, and enjoy it.

I will be at CapClave in October (barring anything unforeseen), and then I think the next con I will be doing is Balticon in May. I’m going to finish up Spells, turn in Rites, and write Rebirth (the short erotica). And then, I’m just going to write.

Today, however, I have other things to do as well. I need to clean up, since we’re hosting the official afterparty next weekend after Baronial Birthday, and I need to cook. And there’s WoW in my future. As well as erotica.

Think I’ll do the to-do list in a separate post – or just on my computer screen. This got longer than I wanted.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.