After all the craziness of the holidays, it’s finally time to settle back into a routine, and I’m feeling pretty nerdy about how excited I am to get back into a regular writing rhythm.

After a seemingly endless cycle of writing, reading, rewriting, rereading, rewriting, and editing, I was starting to lose steam on my current project just a couple of months ago. All the foreshadowing seemed obvious, the jokes felt flat, and it seemed like I’d read it all before. But that’s because I had. I’d gone over that project so many times, how could it possibly feel fresh to me?

So, not long before NaNoWriMo, I took a step back from this project, handed it off to a new beta reader, and started to work on some new things to try to shake the funk off. Well, a few weeks ago, I started getting some feedback from that beta reader, and it was exactly what I needed.

Sometimes you just need an outside source to prove to yourself that you don’t totally  suck and rediscover what made you excited about your work to begin with.

Since then, I’ve felt the wheels turning in the back of my mind, but I haven’t had much time to do anything about it other than make a few notes here and there. After this week, however, I’ve officially had my first full day of writing back, and it was glorious.

It was a freezing, snowy day, so I took full advantage, wrapped myself up in blankets, made hot chocolate, and spent the whole day typing from my bed. As I went through the scenes I’d made notes about and tweaked and expanded things as needed, it felt more like I was visiting old friends instead of laboring through a tedious conversation.

While the snow is not necessary, I hope there are many more days like that in store for me this year. I prefer writing when I have a whole day to dedicate to it and allow myself to really fall into the story without having to worry about keeping track of the time.

But, then again, beggars can’t be choosers. I prefer full days for writing, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m just excited to be getting back to that rhythm after December’s ever-changing schedule.