A type of return – Late February 2024

How do you come back to writing after a hiatus? How do you keep publishing? How do you keep going? Does one still even have the desire to continue their artform or is it some dead thing in the past?

These were the types of things that haunted me over the last year.

A lot happened over the previous year or rather, I had to endure a lot. I endured injury, recovery, difficult home situations and struggles both personally, professionally and creatively.

I never full stopped writing, but things certainly took a down turn and I was honestly plagued by burn out and indecision. I have too many random projects and not a ton of reason to focus on any of it. What I DO need to do is often dry, painful work when life has enough of that. So, what’s been going on?

WOW, I have not updated this in a long time. Life just became, a lot.

Since my last update I successfully gained my full driver’s license in November 2022, which was such an immeasurable hurtle for so long. I sprained my ankle at work and was off my feet for two months during the 2022-2023 holidays. My partner’s sister had to come live with us, three introverts in a one-bedroom apartment with a dog has been an immense challenge on all of us. This lasted from April to September of 2023. LUCKILY, we have moved into a new apartment with two-bedrooms in a great neighborhood and close to work. We have truly made this our home and we all feel better having space.

In addition to all this, I rejoined my local medieval reenactment scene and I am regularly organizing craft nights, events and constantly working on period crafts. Sewing is just more relaxing and supplies more immediate dopamine than going through an agonizing editing process.

Through the last year, please see my previous blog from over a year ago, to see just how manic life has been, my writing and author-related work has fallen by the wayside. I didn’t even give my viewing and reading updates for 2023. I didn’t even do my word count for 2023 because I knew how low it would be and that would depress me.

So where does that leave my writing and career as an author?

It’s not going anywhere, but I need to keep working at finding a good routine.

I am still committed to a writing career and publishing The Veiled Sagas: Wild Things in 2024, likely in May. Along with this new release, my flash fiction collection The Veiled Sagas: The Wrong Side will finally get a paperback release and my first two books; Bloodied and Black as Night will get a second edition release.

I am still poking at several main projects but forcing myself to set aside other ones. I need to get my disciplined writing regime back and its damn hard to do. I can only keep trying and hopefully something will come out of it. I work evening service and that had the biggest shift in my day-to-day routines that made it difficult to keep a regular writing plan.

I know I will never reach the same levels of writing output I had in the past (unless I suddenly write a hit and have all the time in the world to work and deadlines to get me working) but more likely I will just have to keep working, apply for grants when possible, query authors and generally just do the grind. Slowly build back up after my life went through so many changes. I will do my best to try and track changes, share it and hopefully it will help someone else out.

Wish me luck

-Z. F. Sigurdson

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