Getting Back to It

​The last few months have maybe not been as hard on me as on some people. Over the summer I got some writing done, but in the last few weeks, I haven’t done much. That’s because* I’m waiting for National Novel Writing Month to start …. I’m trying a new genre, a modern-day noir detective story, and the other things I’m working on are non-fiction and fantasy, and I don’t want to mess with my style-head.
 
In the meantime, though, after months of thought, I have decided to “redo” my office. This involves painting, and not just the walls. I have long wanted a white office suite, and I started looking at desks/cabinets a couple-three years ago, and I can’t find anything I like as well as the desk I have now. So. I’ve already emptied and move the various file cabinets out, with three of them slated for sanding and painting. I can’t do the desk itself till after NaNo, which gives me an added incentive to finish my 50K-word draft ASAP.
 
One file cabinet’s been moved to another room, and its files put back in. The ones that are coming back into the office are just little two-drawer ones, so they’re in the back room, on the tarp that’s still spread out from a different painting project. The desk, because we don’t want to take it completely apart, is staying in here; we’ll just lay down another tarp and sand/paint it in the middle of the room.
 
The main reason to move the desk from the corner it’s in to “the other corner” is that I’m going to paint a giant chalkboard on the freed-up walls! I have a 4’ x 5’ piece of foam board covered with chalk-board sticky paper, and it’s wonderful, and I want more. The one I have lists the status of the books I’m working on, and now I need some blackboard space for notes and plot lines. I’m really pretty excited about it!
 
Once I finish NaNo, I’ve got at least three other books that need editing, another that needs finishing, and a make-5x8-cards-for-all-my-characters project to finish. I expect, though, that I will take a day or two to just swirl around in my office chair, or stand at the door, to love my new office, and maybe scribble something inspirational on the blackboard.
 
*The other part of “because” is that I have been flailing about in anxiety and depression about the current state of state and national affairs, but it’s just too depressing to go into that here. I will take what distractions I can get, and hope you’re finding some comforts too.