July was mostly a loss. There were a lot of real life issues to deal with, plus a slight obsession over vp results, plus forcing my brain to work on a novel when it didn’t want to. I should have stuck with the shorts. So all I did in July was 4 critiques. Oh I tried to do much more, but each attempt resulted in some excuse or physical manifestation of the stress that nothing got done. So I came up with a new approach.
Feed the monster what it wants.
The muse wants short stories: she gets 3 to revise, 1 to write, then I get to play with the novel. I don’t have to give up the shorts. I’m hoping once I’m happy with the outline and the new race I need to build, that it’ll be easier to jump into the novel writing. But that’s something to deal with in September. Right now, short stories, and building blocks of a novel. And critiques of course. Many many critiques.
Onward and upward, my friends. Hope you had a better month than I did. 🙂 Good luck with August, because my job is not getting any easier, and my workouts are about to take center stage.
PS I read! does that count?
DAWN BONANNO 
Everything counts! But… especially writing.
I just flagellate myself whenever I step out of line. NO IT IS NOT THAT IT IS A REAL THING. Wikipedia!
-bn
Wow Ben, it sounds like you’re harder on yourself than I am. Honestly, I had one bad month ending the longest writing streak I’ve had in years. It’s proof to me that I can do this, strange as that is. 🙂 Yet I feel the need to document this, for myself and for other writers. This happens. Writing is like any relationship: it has ups and downs. The trick is, just like from the relationshipo angle, you learn from that downward trend and find new ways of coping when it hits the fan….. 🙂