Welcome to January's edition of Meri's Monthly Musings! Sol is my helper this month, so say hi to the goofiest of the dorks. I found this tiny trash can for my desk. Sol, expert dumpster diver that he is, claimed it immediately. I'd say I've never seen him this happy, but he's the sunshine boy so he's always this happy.


I don't think I ever shared these plushies I made of my main characters, so sometime soon I'll post about them. Speaking of blog posts, you might have noticed a lack of them in December. I did work on writing regularly, but I took a hiatus from the internet for most of the month. Now that it's January, I'm hoping to get back to blogging more often, as well as being more active on social media again. I'll get to my goals in a minute. To reassure myself that I did in fact do writing this month, here's the December scoop.

December Projects:

• Started updating the series maps. Top left are the original versions, bottom right is where I'm starting to sketch out the updated versions. The characters' homes have changed a little since I made these, so those are getting redone. I'll also be adding to the sketches I have of the capital city, main country, and the continent/world.
• World building stuff. Bottom left is my world building notebook and binder. I'm beginning to move all my finalized world building info into the binder so it's all neatly organized, while I'll keep the notebook notes for anything I'm brainstorming. This month I focused on magic and elementals.
• Character backstories. Those notebooks in the top right are all the ones I was actively using this month. Lots of brainstorming going on for books and character backstory, as well as world building in December. Looking back at my writing log, I only missed five days of writing this month and hit a total of 35 hours. (Not too shabby when my NaNo total was 57 hours and December is always a hectic, impossible month!)
• Book writing! What, me work on actual book writing? I can hardly believe it either! At the tail end of December I started working on the 4th draft of book 1.

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Sol and I want to wish everyone a wonderful 2019! May the year be filled with creativity, kindness, good health, friendship, and well-stocked dumpsters. (Sol made me add that one.)
~Meri