Projects Update

I’ve been remiss for a number of weeks now–no new Simpleton strips, no blogging, and no announcements. Gingerbread Houses has continued to update weekly, thanks to Grug’s diligence, but on the writing side, I haven’t been nearly as productive as I would like for a variety of reason:

1. It’s summer. Hot weather always kills my ability to write.
2. I have a heavier class load for the second summer session, which takes more of my time. And I have an 8:00 AM class twice a week. Early mornings also consistently kill my ability to write.
3. I have another treatment for my thyroid cancer coming up. It’s a precautionary thing, not a major concern. But preparing for it is an issue: I have to go off my thyroid meds (which causes fatigue), and I can’t eat any iodine, which means I have to cook all my own meals in order to avoid iodized salt. So that’s been an additional time suck.
4. And, most importantly, Brandy and I are having a baby! Since we’re only just into the second trimester, this hasn’t actually been a time consuming issue, but it’s certainly been a mental preoccupation.

On the up side, I’m going into the last week of the summer session classes now. Then I get two weeks mostly off (still have to do some prep work for Fall classes) before the fall session starts. My fall workload will be heavier, but won’t start as early in the morning, so that should balance in my favor. And hopefully the weather will begin to cool off in a few weeks as well. Plus, my treatment will be done in just another two weeks, and then I can go back to a normal diet and start taking my pills again, which should have me in better spirits.

Despite all this, I have accomplished a couple of things. I did some revisions to the script for Gingerbread Houses, which I think will make the current chapter even better than it was. And I revised the opening pages of Trouble Is, to set a better tone for the rest of the book. I still have to follow through on revising both these projects, but I expect to do all of that in the two weeks between the end of summer and the beginning of fall. I hope!

After that…I might bring Simpleton back. It’s a low-priority project, but it is a good way to keep me working between other things. On the other hand, I may just go ahead and start a something new and big. It’s been over a year since the last time I started something new and big, so it seems about time.