Emerging from the new novel fog

I've been absent from the blogosphere for a long while! Back in November, in an All in the mind program, neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin said that technological multi-tasking increases the production of the stress hormone cortisol, can overstimulate our brain and cause mental exhaustion. I was suffering from digital fatigue. And two months into writing a new novel, I decided to cut out all the extraneous technological activity. I thought it was going to be hard, I thought I was going to miss Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and Wattpad, that I'd pine for validations from strangers on social media, that I'd feel like a non-entity without publishing a post on my blog. But it's been 5 months since I decided to live more like a 19th century writer and it's been bliss! ( Read my original blog post here ... )

Without online distractions, I've completed my latest novel in seven months, I've written a 7000-word short story, I've been reworking an old novel and I wrote an alternative ending for Silver for all the fans of the story for the Wattpad Block Party Winter edition:  https://www.wattpad.com/217005419-wattpad-block-party-winter-edition-ii . It's been a productive time and I'm so pleased I cleared the headspace for it.


But, now that I'm emerging from the fog of writing a new novel, it's time to get back out there a little. I'm attempting an April book photo challenge on Instagram, you can follow along here: https://www.instagram.com/outaprintwriter/ Thanks to @commasandampersands for the great prompts  https://commasandampersandsblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/join-me-for-my-april-book-photo-challenge/