Like pulling teeth, uphill both ways...

At the beginning of last month, I indulged in a bit of self-congratulation regarding my ability to stay on task and carve little bits of precious time out of my days to devote to my writing. And I also indulged in a bit of self-pity over the projects I've had to temporarily back-burner or de-prioritize.

Since then, I've struggled even to get small amounts of time. Kid's sports and extracurriculars and the general chaos of life and work seems to have increased and expanded into those nooks and crannies where I used to find time.

Add to that my continued frustration with the website I built two years ago as a proof-of-concept for skills related to the day job, and my inability to avoid the siren call of a complete overhaul. I ended up spending several of the time pockets that I did manage to find in the service of rebuilding and relaunching the site. (Check it out at https://www.MatthewRasnake.com/!)

My weakness in that regard may have also been fed by my general aversion to the scene I've spent the last several weeks editing. I finally managed to whip it Saturday night, wrestling the last few paragraphs into submission. In the course of this edit, I've taken four scenes from three different chapters and redistributed and combined them into three scenes in two chapters, while changing the POV, the pacing, and hopefully the quality of description and dialogue.

Most of the time, with this most recent edit pass, changes have come relatively quickly and easily, but with these scenes and these last two combined into one specifically, it has been like pulling teeth. Or, perhaps more appropriately for the content, like climbing a mountain in the middle of a monster storm. BUT, I've finally licked it, and now I can't wait to get this story moving again!

I just wanted to take a quick break in one of my little stolen moments to let you in on what I've been up to, and how it's been going.  As always, I'm thrilled to have you along for the ride, and I can hardly wait to get this done so I can finally share Rogue Planet with you!

Have a happy, haunted Halloween!