Putting my energy elsewhere...

I haven't blogged in a while, but not because there isn't anything going on. I guess I just don't feel like blogging is what I want to put my writing energy into right now, because I've been putting my writing energy into a more productive endeavor.

Remember my book proposal for a novel set during the last days of the Abbasid Caliphate, right before the Mongols strike a deadly blow to the city of Baghdad? I kept it on the back burner for a while, because I became intimidated by it. My expectations were too high and I found myself feeling overwhelmed after I began gathering the materials needed for the research on the period I meant to cover. Also, even though I had a sort of rough outline of a plot, it was so faint that the magnitude of the research overshadowed it-- if that makes any sense.

Now, even though I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed by the research, I'm taking it one step at a time and not getting ahead of myself. As a result, I'm actually writing while I research, which helps me work the plot a lot more, because it relies heavily on historic events that need to fit in order for the story to work the way I want it to. I'm pretty excited about the progress I'm making and the bits I'm gathering with the research. I've even got a sort of routine going: I read for research during the day and at night, which is when I am mentally able to sit down and focus enough to write for some weird reason, I write. It's pretty cool.