Winding Up Autumn

I've managed to catch up a bit with my writing from a prompt a day, 17 out of 30, and I'm back to at least sketching out a poem every day if not writing a good first draft. So that's encouraging and many of us will continue to write once the group is finished, so the sharing of our efforts will continue for a bit on the Facebook page.

Many of the poems I've been writing have been working from the problems I had a few months ago that put me in such a dark place. It's cathartic to be able to work through some of those emotions and the fall out to what happened. There's still things I won't touch on, but the end of summer and autumn in full force seems to be a good metaphor for the time. I've been grouping these poems into a rough collection just now, though I'm not sure where they'll take me in the end. 

I'm struggling with the oncoming winter darkness. I work to my UV sunlamp most mornings, but I still want to curl up on the couch under a blanket and hibernate. I have no energy for fiction at all. I'm enjoying the burst I've been getting from these courses for my poetry, but untangling the mess my novels have become seems like too much work. The new novel has become too complicated, I can't figure out how to express all the character's motivation. It's never enough for my readers, they either want more dramatic complications or less. 

So I think I need a break from fiction. Wendy Pratt's next online course won't be until January and it's a more intense, limited numbers course. Then February will be back to the original set-up. I'm torn whether to do the January course. I like the daily prompts, but this will be two weekly assignments which will get some close reading from Wendy instead. I guess it won't hurt to try it and it will give me something to focus on until February. 

I've been working a bit on my Finnish poetry collection. I think I have all the poems, just trying to sort format and editing. I still haven't heard about my Scottish collection's fate at the publishers.

So I keep on moving on.