What the heck have I been up to?

When I first created my Dreamwriter.earth website and made the decision to include a page for blog posts, I had the unrealistically optimistic thought I’d have the discipline to do a monthly blog post.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen. I did two blog posts in 2022 and three in 2023. From the pattern, you might think I did four in 2024. Well, you would be wrong. How many blog posts did I do in 2024?

Now, in all fairness, I do kind of have a legitimate excuse for this lack of activity. In July of 2024, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. I started treatment of chemotherapy and immunotherapy the week after my daughter’s birthday in August, and just finished the chemo part last week. To say that it’s been a difficult six months would be putting it lightly.

​I didn’t write a new novel during 2024. It’s the first time in many years that I didn’t get a novel started during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Though I did make an attempt. I decided I was going to try and finish one of my works in progress: Project 13. I started Project 13 over five years ago. After reading this blog, you can hop over to the Works in Progress page to get an idea of what the story is about. I think it’s an amazing story that deserves to be finished, but I just couldn’t do it in November. I, then, made it my plan to finish it by the end of the year. That didn’t happen either. Now, here it is nearly the end of February, and I still haven't made significant progress to finish the novel.

I’m hoping now that the chemotherapy is done, I might start to slowly regain the sharp mind I’ve enjoyed and underappreciated my entire life. I’ve been doing the things suggested to regain a clear mind. I find Sudoku almost comical with how easy it is. I managed to complete a nightmare level in 20 minutes or so. I’ve always been a number person and numbers make sense to me, but numbers aren’t what I needed help with, so I took to doing crossword puzzles, Wordle, and word scrambles. My favorite app is Wordscapes.

Are these brain exercises working? I have the clarity of mind to write this blog post, so maybe it’s doing something. I’m not setting another time goal to finish writing Project 13. I made the decision on January 1st that the only New Year's resolution I was going to make for this year is to get a cancer-free diagnosis. That being said, I would like to finish the story and maybe get it published this year.
 
Though I didn’t write anything in 2024, I did publish four novels during the year. All four books have been added to my underappreciated arsenal of books available for sale. Shameless plug: If you click on the individual book covers, it’ll take you to where you can buy them on Amazon. Of course, you can always see what books are available and what’s upcoming here on my newly updated website.

I have several novels in backlog that are written and have been minorly edited. They’re not publish-ready yet, but they can be edited and published with less mental clarity than it takes to plan out and write the novel. In case you haven’t read any of my novels, I tend to write long books that have many interweaving storylines. Anything less than a sharp mind will flub something up and leave something dangling. There’s nothing more annoying to me as a reader than to have a concept or idea brought up in a book and have the author either never address it again or change the idea to fit into a concept in a later book. I guess the only thing that bugs me more as a reader is for a great story to have a terrible ending. Fun fact, that was one of the motivating reasons for me to begin writing my own stories. I couldn’t stand a lousy ending. If I write the book, it'll never have an ending I don’t like. Simple solution. Except when I have chemo brain, and I can’t write more than two sentences in a day.

Along with a serious decrease in my writing, 2024 brought a screeching halt to my artwork. Aside from writing, I also paint. My area of focus is on abstract art. I use acrylic paints and pour them onto a canvas. Then, I tilt and twirl the paint around until I’m happy with the final product. This process is called acrylic paint pouring.

If you want to see any of my paintings, you can hop over to DeviantArt.com and check out my gallery. I miss painting. I miss art in general. I have an art room in our basement that is my sanctuary. Aside from my office, my art room is my favorite room in the entire house. I have in that room anything and everything you can think of, and probably several things you might never associate with art. I have drawers of broken glass, containers of bits and bobs, even a basket full of pistachio shells. They make great flower petals. Don’t judge me. Anyway, down in my art room is where the magic of my painting comes to life. But it is downstairs, and undergoing my cancer treatment sapped my energy. 

There were honestly days that I couldn’t get up from my chair except to stumble to the bathroom. Fatigue plagued me as the chemotherapy, designed to kill off cells (both good and bad), decimated both my red blood cells, leaving me severely anemic, and my white blood cells, leaving me basically without an immune system. But it, hopefully, also killed the cancer cells. I'll know more over the next month.

So, to answer the question I asked at the start of this post. What the heck have I been up to? Unfortunately, not much except resting and recovering the best I can. I am optimistic, though, that 2025 will be more artistically productive for me. Because as Pablo Picasso said: Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. I’m ready for some dusting to happen and for my mind to once again be my friend instead of my enemy.