Amy Laurens's Blog, page 5

Restarting Writing After A Long Break Is Really Painful, Urgh

So I basically haven’t written regularly since, like, early February, when I was finishing up the short stories for And Then I Shall Transform. Then it was straight into the mayhem of formatting and publication tasks for that book, since I hadn’t really left myself enough time to do that AND write – see here for the whole story about why *facepalm*.

Then family life was kind of chaotic in April due to holidays and visits and things, and then May hit and I was In Pain and also we had relative...

Iteration, Or, When Things Don’t Work

Had an interesting experience earlier in the year when doing the illustrations for And Then I Shall Transform: there are six short stories, so obviously I did six illustrations… except I ended up doing seven. Why? Because one of the illustrations I did just didn’t work.

Here it is:

Now, it’s not a BAD illustration necessarily, right? BUT it doesn’t read clearly. Not sure if it’s more or less the case online, but certainly in person, it’s hard to focus in on the fact that it’s a human...

#MadeItMonday: More Sketchy Things

Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!

Picked up the markers again on the weekend with my sister when s...

#MadeItMonday: Mushroom!

Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!

Took some time out on Saturday again to Art with the small child...

Inertia vs. Rest

It’s an on-going deliberation for many of us, I think, and one that has become/is becoming particularly pertinent in my life right now: what’s the difference between inertia and rest? We’re badly primed to understand this difference in modern western capitalist society, which demands we give account (usually in monetary terms) for every second of our days.

We know we’re SUPPOSED to rest, but most of us are, let’s face it, really BAD at that. We rest, but by doing other things. We rest, but b...

Let’s Agree To Pretend This Is A Useful Title

I’m here writing again at bed time because – shockingly enough – ending the night on my phone is not doing wonders for my already difficult sleep, while going through a routine of shower-exercise-write-read before bed seems to be making a difference. WHO KNEW, RIGHT.

I have nothing particular to say, but that’s also not exactly uncommon when I’m blogging regularly here, so if you’ve been around awhile you’ll know that we’ll meander somewhere nice eventually and wind ourselves to some sort of...

Restarting Editing

Super excited that I got my act together enough last night to reopen edits for Touchstone. I’ve been avoiding it for MONTHS, not – shockingly – because I’ve been sick but because I’ve been annoyed by the fact of having to do it at all It’s hard and effortful and I just. don’t. wanna.

Writing novels with ADHD is a Thing. Touchstone took me basically a year to draft, and at 92,000 it’s actually not quite done – the climax is missing, so at least 3 or 5 chapters at about 2000 words each. That...

A Plethora Of Options

Just some random musings on the state of my life this evening, journal style, because yes, I’m writing this in the evening even though it’ll show up first thing in the morning – not that that matters, because by the time you read it, it could be morning, it could be evening, it could be on the site or in your inbox or via Instagram and what even is time really anyway?

(Thoughts: I have Thoughts on the nature of time, actually, having been doing rather a lot of reading up on the physics there...

Phew, This One’s A Heavy One

Content notification: cancer, chronic illness

So, it’s been a smidge. I thought maybe that was just because my hip was playing up – which it was – giving me a lot of grief in terms of pain and limiting my mobility.

Yeah. Turns out it’s a bit more serious than that, and I am riddled with cancer, which is not my favourite news. So the last couple of weeks have been A Lot, just in terms of getting a diagnosis and assessing where everything is at and being in hospital for a bit and starting t...

Friday Favs, aka Things I’m Grateful For (With Pictures!)

A Friday Favs with pictures this time! How glorious. What a thing – wait for it – to be grateful for. *grin*

I was going to do this like picture – sentence – picture – sentence etc but I decided that would make the post unwieldy, so I’ve just popped the pictures in and captioned them. Huzzah!

Seeing the 25th anniversary production of Riverdance, OMG. Childhood DREAM COME TRUE. Bunny, obviously. OMG HARDCOVERS!! SO PRETTY!! Yes, Crystal will feature multiple times, I am multiply...