Quantity First

Long time, no blog. This place is awfully dusty. I need to bring someone in to clean up. Explaining my absence …

The last year-and-a-half has been, in the words of many a sage, a “challenge.” In short, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2012, a situation that basically consumed a large part of our lives until February of this year. While all this was happening, two other life events came up, one of which was self-imposed — my mother-in-law was diagnosed with dementia and was put under the care of a state-appointed guardian and we decided to take advantage of the sellers’ market in California and move to Arizona.

Good news does usually seem to arise from bad situations, however. First, my wife is fully recovered and doing very well. We look forward to many, many cancer-free years. Because of this and my own past health scare, we decided to move out of our stressful lives on the west coast and take refuge in Phoenix’s West Valley. This was the smartest choice we ever could have made for ourselves.

As for my wife’s mother, we are happy that at least she’s in a good nursing home and is being cared for. My wife is an only child and all this happening with her mom occurred in the midst of all her treatments, preventing her from going back and dealing with what appeared to be her declining mental faculties (a challenge since she lives so far away from us). At 76, she’s healthy, safe and in good hands now — and she’s no longer smoking — my wife’s now leaning to deal with the new normal of sharing guardianship with a stranger.

Creativity doesn’t take a holiday, of course, and last year was no exception. I was not happy with my production, however, and didn’t quite hit my quota, though I did satisfy all my commitments in spite of schedule somewhat in flux most of the time.

This year, however, we’re off like a bottle rocket. I already conceived of and wrote the first draft of a new screenplay and just finished the first draft of a new novella. Now I’m in the midst of editing a novel I began a couple of years ago during the only NaNoWriMo I participated in and soon will be picking up where I left off. My goal is to finish that first draft by June 1st. After that, I’m going back to my TV sitcom project and finishing off the “bible,” from which I hope to be able to get pitched to some of the networks.

So, as the title says, this year’s all about quantity — output first, editing and polishing second. This will be done while increasing my blogging output and working on committed editing and writing projects for others.

Stay tuned?

~ Michael