I’m up in Hervey Bay this week staying with my daughter who moved up here earlier this year. It’s not a holiday – I’m still day-jobbing – but in many ways, the change of environment helps it feel as though it could be.

Where she lives is right on the water and even though I’m logged into the day job all day, seeing the ocean from where I sit and listening to it as it laps against the seawall somehow makes it okay. And, at the moment, I need that. I’m going through one of those stages where I’m struggling. It feels as though there’s a little anxiety filled ball in my tummy that flutters around constantly, but especially on my days off. I’m second-guessing myself a lot. I wonder whether it’s because I haven’t seen my work colleagues since November 2019 and am feeling disconnected or whether it’s something else entirely.

It’s filtering through to my writing at present and I’m also questioning my ability in that regard. Yes, it’s the old imposter syndrome and boy am I suffering from it. At the same time, I feel as though I’m sabotaging myself. Whatever is behind it I need to pull my big girl pants up and just get over myself already.

All of that aside, I’ve made excellent progress on the rewrite for The Café On Beach Road. I’m currently sitting at 60,000 words so the end is well and truly in sight. I really enjoy both this stage and the one that comes next – the structural edit. It’s where the story and the characters are fleshed out and where the textures are added. Sure, it’s frustrating deleting entire scenes, but doing so does help move things along. I’m grabbing hold of every possible minute to work on it – before work, at lunchtime, after work. Ten minutes here, twenty there. It all counts.

In the creative fug that I’ve been in I haven’t touched It’s In The Stars since the last time we spoke. I shared the first draft of a potential new start it with my writing group last week. It was the first time I’ve shared the first draft of anything I’ve written with anyone and I did feel out of my comfort zone in doing it. The feedback though was constructive and valuable. I do, however, think I’ll get more out of the process in future if I share something I’ve been working on not simply knocked out on a whim.

Just as this is the first time I’ve belonged to a book club, it’s also the first time I’ve belonged to a writing group and I’m now wondering why I resisted doing so as long as I did. Each of us writes in different genres and that’s good too.

I’m running behind on some book business type of things – covers for the print version of Escape To Curlew Cottage, setting up pre-orders, Amazon and Goodreads listings for Beach Road and It’s In The Stars, starting on the cover designs for Beach Road and It’s In The Stars and a few other marketing bits and pieces, but we’ll talk about that next time.

Until then…

Jox