Welcome! To those that dared to take the plunge and join me here. I see I have a couple new people, so I wanted to give you a head’s up. Anyone that is a part of this newsletter or the Patreon gets exclusive pricing. That is located in the featured post within this website. It does, unfortunately, only work in the US, but I will be working on getting access much wider.

January has been an emotional whiplash, so I wanted to reach out and make sure you’re okay. I somehow deleted the app, and I don’t even remember doing it. I think unconsciously it happened for a couple of reasons…

• I knew the emotional roller coaster wasn’t done, and I needed to get off now while I could.

• I needed help to make sure that I was prioritizing my health and writing the way I promised you (and myself) I would.

• I didn’t have the spoons to play the political game that’s going to be required to keep going on that platform as it changes for the worst.

When everyone was telling me it was back up, I was disappointed in myself. Luckily, not for long. I rested, listened to Sophie’s playlist, and wrote 588 words. This was my third day writing 30 minutes in a row. Each day I lose 100-200 words because my brain is becoming more exhausted, and that’s when I knew I made the right decision.

I posted a few things on Threads, BlueSky, and IG. I mostly talked to myself. I have lost my ability to talk to people regularly. I don’t post enough consistently to push my stuff out onto the FYPs. That’s why I developed a group chat in the Patreon for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have a paid membership or are free either! I no longer want to let someone mess with my family whenever they feel like it. I’m selfish like that…LOL!

I still got other bookish things done yesterday in my 30 minute window. And I felt like I had accomplished something, instead of wasting my limited time away. It felt really good, too.

Of course, waking up to 20+ mph wind gusts and high pressure outside today has stopped me from doing much of anything at the moment, but we’ll see if it eases up later today. In the meantime, I’m listening to a cozy read of mine, Morgan’s Cross and The Handmaid’s Tale. (I wanted to get to it before it was banned) This is the first time in over a year that I have been able to listen to a fictional book and focus! So, a break was definitely needed. Hopefully, I will be able to get more writing done during this time period as well. *Fingers crossed!

Family of Love

The last two days I did a crazy amount of over 1k words in 30 minutes. Donna and Cecil finally had a lot to say…lol! But it meant I had to take it easy today in return. So at 435 words I stopped. I was already started to pay for my mad dashes the last couple of days even though I slept for 4-5 hours right after. However, I can say that I have 3 characters left, and then the first draft will be complete! Editing takes me much longer than writing, because it pulls on my brain more, but it feels nice to have something close to being done this early in the year!

So, I am pacing myself. When I have a good day, I ride it, but never past my 30 minutes. And I knew that despite having a great two days, I needed to restrict myself today, even if I didn’t want to. Some days, I don’t open the laptop at all. I’m still playing with the dictation software, but I find it still easier to type, even if it means typing with my eyes closed and not even looking at what I’m typing until later. It’s a process, and my computer is stubborn to always pickup my voice through the headset instead of the computer mic for some reason, but we’re still a work in progress.

I’m excited though. We’re getting there.

Love on Fire

I was curious where I was at on this. I had been writing on it quite a bit in 2023, and a little in 2024. Not as much as I wanted since I was struggling so fiercely with my episodes, but still forward all the same. I even got nervous, because I was putting all the pieces together and couldn’t find the ending piece I had written. To say I was going to cry was an understatement, y’all! This was one of my favorite scenes I have ever written, and I couldn’t find the freaking word document anywhere!

Luckily, I thought, “Maybe it’s in Google Docs?” and luckily it was! It was when I was trying to use the voice to text, and Google wasn’t having it…LOL! So, I had to clean it up with punctuation and sentence structure, but the scene was still there. And thankfully Mario wasn’t here, because I just might have kissed him for my glee of finding my precious scene…hahahaha!

But I was excited to see that in all of my chaotic random scene writing I do, I’m actually over a third of the way done. I don’t know if I will get it finished before the end of the year, but Emma and Luke are yelling at me like the thousands of other characters, and far from being forgotten. So, don’t worry. It’s coming too….

That’s all for now! Hope this finds you doing well…

All the best,
Stormi