IWSG: An Author's Challenge is a Family Gathering

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. Well, my challenge to my writing these past couple of weeks has been family gathering. The challenge isn't my relatives themselves, but having to schedule my writing time around them. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but first I'll answer the IWSG optional question for October. 

IWSG October 1 Question

The question for October is: What is the most favorite thing you have written, published or not? And why? I really don't have a favourite piece that I've written. I do have plenty of my own stories that I like, published and unpublished. One that comes closest to a favourite, and so that I like very much, is actually a short story I wrote several years ago but have not yet published. I'll publish it for sure, I'm just not sure when. It's a horror story about gargoyles. If I remember correctly, I set it in the autumn, and so I wanted to publish it as it's own mini book (like I did with "The Trespassers" about a year ago) for this Halloween season. However, I'm coming too close to the end of revising "Bad Apps" to want to delay it any further. What I like about the gargoyle story, though, is that I feel it's one of my most chilling tales yet it's nostalgic of my Catholic school years in the 1970s. It's also teen horror (even though I only attended Catholic school in my primary grade years). 

Current Writing Projects and Status 

Working on my writing projects has been a little slow in the past couple of weeks due to  family staying with me for a family reunion we attended over this past weekend. I respect my family, I welcome them into my home, but like with almost any visitation it can throw off a person's schedule, especially an artist's. The other person doesn't understand your schedule like they do with a day job schedule and so you have to work on your writing around their presence. It's not like you have a committed day job with an agreed upon schedule where your family totally understands you have to go to at a specific time for a specific length of time. And if you attend your writing sessions during your regularly self-scheduled time instead of working around visiting family, you feel like you're ignoring your loved ones. 

One of the other challenges to my writing when I have visitors staying with me is using my laptop in my bedroom so I'm not distracted trying to work in my living room where I normally work. The challenge of that is the transferring of files between devices because I have Word only on my desktop. I use free word processing software for the laptop which isn't always compatible with the transfer. I'm not sure if purchasing a Word license for my laptop is worth it since my family doesn't stay with me that frequently. 

Looking for Beta Readers

The family member who was staying with me went home today and so I'm just now getting back on track. I need to return to revising the introduction to "Bad Apps" so I can get the book formatted for beta reading. I'm still looking for beta readers and so if anyone is interested, please email me at sarellanorose@gmaildotcom. There are rewards and benefits that come with beta reading. You can read more about those at my July 24, 2022 post. 

What is your favourite thing that you've written? How do you deal with "disruptions" in your writing schedule when needing to tend to family? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Beth Camp, Crystal Collier, and Cathrina Constantine! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels! 

Until next time . . .