Bless y’all for putting up with my flaky ass. It’s been months since I’ve written a thing on or for this site and for that, I apologize. The last few months of 2020 involved quite a lot of change for me, which is saying something, given the year we all had. I got a cat at the end of September, lost my job in mid-October, acquired a second feline friend four days later, found my way into a new job, started working remotely, found one of my dream careers, decided to apply to grad school, got a working diagnosis, and took my first vacation with my partner. Taylor Swift also dropped a new album and we all know how I feel about Taylor Swift.
I think I posted last for NaNoWriMo or the poem for our six month celebration. Unfortunately, I didn’t accomplish my NaNoWriMo goals, as I ran out of spoons for that endeavor much too quickly. (Follow the link for an explanation of spoon theory.) Since then, quite a lot has happened, but most of it has very little to do with writing.
As you well know, I am not shy about discussing my mental health or sexuality. In December of 2020, my brain took a dive off the deep end, forcing me to see a psychiatrist for the first time. I left his office that morning with a working diagnosis, the first I hadn’t had to weasel out of my healthcare providers. In addition to my Generalized and Social Anxiety Disorders, he attributed many of my symptoms, depressive and otherwise, to Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type and Borderline Personality Disorder. He also informed me that I should not get face tattoos, as he does every single time I see him. Let the record show that I have never once considered, let alone mentioned, getting a face tattoo. I suppose the worry is just part of his charm.
My gender and sexuality had a little overhaul, as well. Or rather, my bisexuality gave my gender an extreme makeover. I have come to identify as a non-binary femme and I use she/they pronouns. I’m taking my initials, K.E., for a whirl but if you know me as Kate, that’s still me too.
As my mental health took a deep dive, so too did my reading habit. Before January, I hadn’t read a book successfully for months. Any writer can tell you that if you’re not reading, the work you produce suffers, and suffer my work did. With the New Year starting, I took on a gentle reading challenge to help my brain and my work, one that requires a measly average of three books a month. For someone who reads five hundred words a minute at fighting weight, this was palatable enough to slide right past the barriers my depressive swings had so carefully built. I hit eight books this past weekend, a feat teenage me would laugh themself silly at, but it made me happy nonetheless.
So I’m healing, or at least, I’m not stuck anymore. December also brought me Scrivener, a word processor design for people writing books. Or, for people with whack ass brains like mine. Either way, the way its creators organized it makes my brain do a little happy dance. I have two documents, one for this website and one for my Vocal page, that I’m working on making into little content warehouses. I also have eight projects I’ve been working on, one sentence at a time.
The breakdown of those projects looks something like this:
- Three stand-alone novels
- One duology
- One trilogy
- One saga
- One anthology
For those of you particularly attached to my serial fiction pieces Syndication and Adventures, those stories have morphed into two of the stand-alone novels. The book section of my Not Found Here tab mentions Political Climate, my duology. The other books are borne from either old ideas from my youth or an idea sparked from the genius of Taylor Swift herself. More details to come, as I get back into the swing of things.
I want to say thank you to everyone reading this and for caring at all about a twenty-something mess of an author and educator. I have no posting schedule in mind, but when I’ve built my little warehouses of content, y’all will be the first to know. Until then, I hope blog posts will do.
All my love,
K.E.
In Search of a Story 