Last week marked six months of freelancing. It’s a time that’s been full of ups and downs — right now they feel more like downs than ups. A succession of projects I’ve been working on have suddenly gone south, which means I’ve been trying to salvage something from them. And while I know it’s bad luck or bad planning, rather than my own writing ability, that have caused things to fall apart, it would be easy to look and wonder why on earth I’m doing this.

The good news is that this all means I can start to move forward after several months of long, slow projects. I’m coming up with ideas for stories and the plan is to mix things up with a few shorter, faster turnaround bits of work that can keep me active while the long stuff plays out.

Generating work and actually completing it over the next few weeks is going to be tough, though; the days are full of the administrivia of starting afresh — packing up and selling off our belongings, incorporating our UK company, setting up bank accounts and so on. And on top of this there’s also our attempt to spend time with our family of friends before we go.

Simply not enough hours in the day.

(photo: me and a corn dog in Santa Cruz, by Anna)