Hi! This is me getting back into the blogging groove (maybe, hopefully). A couple little things going on over here. I’ll start with the one looming larger in my mind (in this singular moment, anyway). The 100-Day Project! A very creative friend of mine recently posted on Instagram about her participation in this project (of which I’d never heard before) as a way to keep up with her writing and knitting, to make these things a priority. For the few weeks prior to laying eyes on her post, I’d been tinkering with the idea of writing morning pages, à la Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I’d even gone out and purchased three journals from Barnes and Noble (I couldn’t choose just one, so I used the additional purchases to serve as extra motivation [guilt?] to fill the first. Of course, I promptly went home and left all three untouched for two weeks). I’m in the process of creating (read: overseeing the creation of) my new home office, and it should be ready to house my creative genius by the end of the winter/early spring. I said to myself: Self, doesn’t it make the most sense to begin your brand-new writing routine within your brand-new writing space? When my (very sweet but sometimes irritatingly encouraging) husband, with whom I’d shared my excitement about morning pages, asked me how they were going, I explained my reasoning for not having started yet—and I ignored his knowing smirk. But my friend’s IG post gave my inner artist the nudge she needed to stop making excuses. Plus, I was already two days late, so if I was going to participate, I’d need to get my buns in gear. Thankfully, I already had my journals. That very day, I sat down and cranked out some words.

Now, I’ve participated in writing challenges before. And as excited as I was before starting, I always dreaded the writing itself. Because it’s hard to actually be the creative genius that you tell people reading your blog that you are. But morning pages are different (thank God), because you’re their only audience. Or, really, there is no audience. I think Julia Cameron asks that you don’t reread your pages for something like six months. It’s more about purging your jumbled thoughts and/or emotions from your brain and/or heart to allow for the clarity to most efficiently tap into your well of creativity. And where there is no audience, there is no pressure to create perfect content. That whole “dance like no one’s watching” idea. In my first morning pages today, I rambled about a dream I had last night and pondered its meaning; I wrote about how my writing had just been interrupted by a snuggly ten-year-old (always a good reason to hit “pause”). I wrote nothing of great importance. But I’ll tell you this: today is the first day since December 20th of last year that I felt like dusting off the ol’ blog.

Now onto agent-search news. I don’t have one yet—but I can report that this round of submissions has, so far, gone much better than previous rounds. In the six weeks or so that I’ve been querying my revised manuscript, I’ve received as many full requests as I have rejections (3:3). During my previous rounds, which lasted from about 10/21 thru 7/22, I received a total of two full requests. So, an improvement, yes? Not only did I make the manuscript a gazillion times better, but I overhauled my query letter, as well. I was given some great advice for how to strengthen it—and I listened this time.

Of course, now I’m obsessing, refreshing my email every three seconds for new messages from agents. But that’s where the morning pages come in. I’ve got some ideas clunking around in my head for new stories, but I’m having a hard time finding the desire to sit in front of my keyboard and see what comes of them. If morning pages really are the magic so many claim they are, I’m hopeful to find my writing groove again soon.

For those of you following for doggo content, here you go: