The bad news, of course, is that it knocked me on my ass for over a last week.

There’s an old saying about how ‘crazy’ is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Since sometime in August, I’ve been saying that I’d get my buffer rebuilt, and we’d get back to the consistent posting I had for the first half of the year… any week now.

Building up the buffer while keeping on deadline and dealing with all the life shit isn’t working. It’s time for something new.

I had debated taking a hiatus over July to build the buffer back up, and in hindsight, I really should have done that. So instead, I’ll need to do it now. Going forward, I’m going to schedule a 1-month hiatus each year to try to keep a buffer going. We’ll see how it goes.

Unfortunately, there’s another issue — one reason I thought I’d have a chance to rebuild a buffer the past couple of months is because of the stories we’re doing right now. Our current stories already had the plot and characters and everything mapped out, an in-depth outline for Building Family and all the dialog was already written for What You Will.

It turns out I really am a pantser. Writing to spec, even a spec I created, is proving to be way more difficult than the ‘have a rough outline and fill it in as I go’ method I usually use.

For now, as much as I love the idea, I’ll be shelving Building Family. I might come back to it in the future when I have time to work some kinks out and have a solid buffer, but not making any promises.

While What You Will is giving me trouble, it’s not giving me as much trouble as Building Family, so we’ll be picking it back up after this hiatus.

My initial plan was to push through to the end of October and go on hiatus in November. Or even December. But really, that’s just going to lead to more missed posts in the long run. And probably the short run.

However, I’m not going to leave you completely high and dry — especially on such short notice. Regular posting will be suspended through November 12, and we’ll pick up Tuesday, November 16. Between now and then, I’ll share posting snippets, blurbs, and other randomness from my archives each Friday.

Dropping Building Family will leave a hole in the rotation, so if you see something in the snippets and random bits that you’d like more of, let me know. I might be able to make that happen.

Thanks for your patience, and remember folks:

Masks and hand sanitizer aren’t just for COVID!

(Originally posted to newsletter Oct 15, 2021)