Katharine Swan Is Now on Bluesky!

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about my 20 years of blogging, and how much the writing industry and social media have changed during that time.  The rise of Facebook and other social media sites and the corresponding decline of blogging have dramatically changed both of those things.

I think we’re now on the cusp of more changes, and the domination of the big names hangs in the balance as independent media and platforms are on the rise.  Twitter’s star has already started to fall since it was taken over by Elon Musk and has turned into a home for right-wing extremists, and it kinda seems like Facebook and Meta are headed in a similar direction as they ramp up the Big Brother approach, burying liberal content with their algorithms while the comment sections are overrun by the administration’s disinformation army.

So I’ve decided to expand my reach to additional platforms.  I have this blog and an author Instagram, and I intend to eventually have an author page on Facebook as well.  I have a limited presence on Substack as well, primarily for my sporadic politics newsletter, What to Know Today.  I plan to do eventually do more with Substack, and I’ve also decided it’s time to carve out a corner for myself on Bluesky.  The latter seems to be more of a Twitter replacement than a Facebook- or Instagram-style platform, just without the crazy overlord and MAGA leanings.

I’ve also found that politics has been creeping into my writing persona more and more.  How could it not, as central a role as it’s starting to play in our lives?  I’m taking my inspiration from other writers and creators who are outspoken about their political views.  I even think politics may have to play a bigger role in my 1920s vampire series, given the implications of the era’s corruption on current events.

If you are on Bluesky, be sure to follow me there too!

Twenty Years of Blogging

I was sick and didn’t post on the official anniversary, and then the rest of the month pretty much got away from me, but December 5, 2025 — exactly a month ago — marked 20 years since I started my blog.  Two decades is a long time, and sometimes I can’t believe it’s been so long.  To give you an idea of how much has changed in that time, I’ve composed a list of then versus now.

In twenty years:

• I’ve gone from fledgling freelancer, to part-time, back to full-time, and finally to not freelancing at all while I focus on my own projects
• I’ve worked on the side as a part-time nanny, a house cleaner and assistant, a babysitter, and a stall mucker (and I still do the last two)
• I’ve gone through three iterations of my website
• I’ve started 11 novels, finished first drafts of 5 of those, started second drafts of exactly one, and published none
• I’ve participated in 20 years of NaNoWriMo (now DenNoWriMo in the Denver area) as a writer, 9 years as a volunteer Municipal Liaison, one year (2024) as a rogue community organizer, and one year (2025) as a co-founder of a shiny new local organization
• I’ve also started volunteering at the local doll and miniatures museum, primarily as a board member but also occasionally writing newsletter articles and other short content 

Also during this time, the market has gone through many changes.  For instance:

• Freelancers have been undercut first by lowballing writers from India, and now AI
• Freelancing opportunities that once abounded have dwindled
• Blogging has diminished in popularity, replaced by social media and video format posts

Twenty years ago, I had graduated college and started my career only a year previous.  I had worked full-time as a technical writer for nearly that entire year while freelancing on the side, before making the jump to freelancing full-time about two months earlier.  I think it was a lot easier in those days; the internet was advanced enough to offer lots of opportunities to aspiring writers, but not so advanced that it actually took away opportunity (like AI does today).

At the same time, the logistics of freelancing was harder in those days.  Before the Affordable Care Act, it was harder for freelancers to get health insurance.  The ACA was a game changer for freelancers (as well as for anyone with preexisting conditions).

And then there was the community.  Back then, MySpace was still a thing, Facebook was just starting out but hadn’t taken off yet, and blogs and forums were how writers established community.  I miss those days sometimes.  I used to “warm up” every day by reading other writers’ blogs before I got to work myself.

Finally… money, because that has to be addressed.  I don’t feel like writers’ wages have gone up as much as they should have in 20 years, certainly not enough to keep up with how much the cost of living has risen.  It’s kind of scary how much incomes haven’t kept up with the cost of things, honestly.

I’m not where I thought I would be in 20 years, that much is for certain.  I didn’t foresee getting burned out by freelancing, or struggling so much to follow my lifelong dream of writing and publishing books.  But I’m also not sorry about where I am.  I have a good life and I’m (hopefully) back on track to finish and publish some books in the near future.

I wonder where the internet, the industry, and this blog will be in another 20 years?

For funsies, here is my very first blog post!

New Year: Threat or Promise?

I know I haven’t blogged in some time.  Last year developed quite the snowball effect, and by the last few months of the year, there was so much to deal with that I didn’t have the bandwidth for blogging.  As a result, I fell off the wagon as far as blogging weekly about my 2025 goals.

I’m not going to set my New Year’s resolutions as high this year, or really at all.  Last year I found how fatally distracting to my goals the current events could be, and it made it even more demoralizing how much I fell behind as the year went on.  I’m also going to discontinue my weekly check-ins.  Instead, I’m going to go back to basics and blog about writing and writing-related topics.

Honestly, I was eager to say goodbye to 2025, because it’s been so awful both personally and politically, and I had cautiously optimistic hopes for 2026.  If I’d written this post on the first or second day of the year, it might have been very different.  Unfortunately, it only took 2026 until day three to deliver a whopping gut punch to our democracy, as we all woke this morning to the news that the administration had carried out an illegal (i.e., not approved by Congress) strike on Venezuela.

With the understanding that 2026 is likely going to continue in quite the same fashion as 2025, possibly getting even worse if today is any indication, I’m going to adjust my expectations for the year accordingly.  If I had a hard time staying focused last year, and this year is potentially going to get worse, I need to be realistic with my goals.

With that being said, I have two goals… or maybe it’s better to call them “focuses,” as I am not going to militantly track progress the way I did last year.  I spread myself too thin, and then found myself in crisis mode thanks to current events and my suspected ADHD burnout.  This year will be about learning to cope with what 2025 and 2026 have dealt us, rather than expecting to go back to the easy successes of 2024.

For 2026, I would like to:

1. Get back to work on my personal writing projects.  I have completely lost the habit of writing every day.  I decided I was going to start working on my novel again on January 1st, and set a goal to work on it at least a little every day.  If that is adding a single word, so be it.  I just want to move my writing goals to the front burner again.
2. Find a better system for managing goals and motivating myself.  As I noted, I have come to suspect that I have ADHD.  It would explain my struggles with chronic burnout throughout my freelancing career, and my problems with motivation.  Obviously I need to find a way to work within this framework so that I stop burning myself out all the time.  Currently I’m trying out Finch to see if it can help me, particularly with motivation.

My blog posts from here on out will focus more on my writing life and the journey to find some kind of structure that works better for me.  Expect too that politics may make it into my ramblings from time to time.

Happy New Year, to everyone except the administration currently ruining my focus and wellbeing!  Thank you for your attention to this matter.  KSL

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week ?: Back on the Wagon

It’s been over two months since the last time I did a goals check-in.  My life just got to be too, too much, and something had to give… and that something turned out to be, among other things, trying to meet the goals I set at the beginning of the year, before the world went crazy.

Things are marginally less chaotic right now, not because my life is no longer busy but because the busyness is somewhat more focused, so I’m going to try to hop back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger.

Where I’m at Now

The last couple of months have been one major thing after another, and sometimes at the same time.  There was the Fall Show for the Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys, which I had to prepare a doll exhibit, part of a doll program, and a workshop; there was all the house sitting for my husband’s parents, which made it difficult to get much done at our house; there was trying to get the house ready for my mom to stay with us; and there was my mom’s surgery and recovery.

Once we got all that done, we still had NaNoWriMo FauxNoWriMo DenNoWriMo to get ready for.  Our local region did a fun spin-off of NaNoWriMo last year, after everything blew up, and called it FauxNoWriMo.  This year, after NaNoWriMo announced they were officially shutting down, we decided to rename our local community DenNoWriMo, and start building it out to be a local replacement for NaNoWriMo.  Getting it ready for November meant building a new website, planning events, planning fun extras like stickers, writing email blasts, and beefing up the social media community.

Now DenNoWriMo is just a few days away, and November is sure to be another whirlwind month.  With only two months left in the year, I’m hoping to get back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger than the last, oh, nine months have gone.

Where I’m at right now:

Writing

I haven’t worked on my novel in months at this point, although of course I’m hoping that’ll change in November.  And obviously I haven’t been maintaining my blog and Instagram either, except for the Banned Books Week post I made in October.

Decluttering and Organization

We worked on decluttering and organizing the house before my mom came to stay with us, and a bit during and after that too.  Unfortunately our progress was stalled more recently, as we had DenNoWriMo to prepare for and unexpected additional house sitting for my husband’s parents.  I’m hoping to get back to that in November, though, in addition to working on my novel and running DenNoWriMo.

Dolls

I haven’t worked on a doll in ages, and honestly, the decluttering and organization project will take precedence over doll projects.  But I do hope to get back to them soon, possibly by December.

Lessons Learned

Honestly, if there was a lesson in any of this, it was that plans and goals don’t always turn out the way you want them to.  I can’t blame myself for not sticking to my weekly goals because it’s not like I knew when I set them that my mom would need surgery, or my husband would lose his job, or that we’d have a fascist regime taking over our country and stressing us all out.

Sometimes the best you can do is just to get through it with your life and yourself in one piece.

Like I said, if I can pick things back up and finish out the year a little stronger, I’ll be happy with that.

Happy Banned Books Week 2025!

It’s been a while.  Life has been hectic and I’ve gotten away from tracking my progress — mostly because I’ve had to focus on so many other things that my goals for the year have fallen by the wayside.  But I couldn’t go without posting about Banned Books Week!

Today kicks off Banned Books Week for 2025.  To celebrate the week, I always like to browse the list of top banned and challenged books from the year before, and read one or more of them if I can.

As usual, the list of the top challenged books for last year includes quite a few repeats.  And as usual, the list betrays the homophobia/transphobia, racism, and sexism that runs rampant in our culture.

1. All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
2. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (TIE)
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (TIE)
5. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
6. Looking for Alaska by John Green (TIE)
7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (TIE)
8. Crank by Ellen Hopkins (TIE)
9. Sold by Patricia McCormick (TIE)
10. Flamer by Mike Curato

In fact, I’ve now read all of the usual suspects except for the first two, possibly the first three.  All three are now on my TBR list.

I’ve been celebrating Banned Books Week in this manner for almost 20 years, but never has it seemed as important as it seems this year.  With the year’s events — the threats to our Constitution, particularly to our First Amendment rights — I feel like our rights to read and write what we want is quickly becoming ever more precious.

So I will definitely be reading the remaining three books on the list in the coming weeks.

Never forget how lucky we are, for the past 250 years, to have been able to read what we want.  Nazis burned books to try to destroy their influence.  Don’t let history repeat itself.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 33: Tough Times

Last week was not what I expected, to say the least.  My energy and focus, and therefore my productivity, basically fell off a cliff with the drop in hormones during that part of my cycle.  It shouldn’t have surprised me because it has happened every month since I’ve started tracking it, but I had hoped to be able to continue using the break method I’d found to be so effective the week before.

So much for that.

And on Friday, we got some especially bad news: My husband was let go from his job, which had started out as a contract-to-hire position but there were never any open positions for him.  So now he’s back to job hunting, after a little over a year at that job.

It’s a little more stressful this time, since our finances are in rougher shape.  Our kitty’s care before she died last December had added to our debt, so we have more bills to cover now.  Plus we also didn’t have the advantage of knowing in advance this time that the end was coming, so we weren’t able to prepare for the gap in pay as we had been last time.

I have been in a slow period with my own income, so I’m going to step things up and see if I can contribute a little more, which will unfortunately cut into my time cleaning and organizing around the house.  Fortunately, my mom’s surgery was delayed a week, so I have until later in September now to get the house ready.

Last week was pretty dismal — about the only goal I met was my blogging and author IG posting goals, and a single day of working on novel research — so I’m going to forego the rundown this week.  Hopefully this week will be more productive, and I’ll have more positive stuff to report next Monday.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 32: The Power of Breaks

Last week was productive, but it required a lot of maintenance, and I had to be fairly single-minded with my focus, which means that I didn’t get any writing done — only organizing.  But that’s the biggest priority right now, to be ready for my mom coming here during her recovery, so that’s okay.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was so successful last week was that I took a lot of breaks.  It wasn’t a rigid Pomodoro approach, as there were no timers, but whenever I achieved a small task or felt like I was getting to a point of overwhelm, I took a break and regrouped.  It allowed me to keep moving forward all week long.

Unfortunately, it was also extremely exhausting to be pushing myself so much, and by the end of the week I could feel that I was struggling to maintain my energy levels.  I also found I was capable of many fewer focus sections by the end of the week.  Perhaps if I’d had the entire weekend to rest and recoup, I’d have been able to come back feeling refreshed today, but I had a restringing class at the museum yesterday and as a result, was “on” for the most of the weekend, too.

Today, unfortunately, the focus sessions and breaks are not working.  It could be that I’m still exhausted from last week and the lack of break since yesterday was a big day, or it could be that this is my period week, and I’ve consistently found through the last few months of tracking that my energy and focus levels take a nose dive during the week of blank pills.

Regardless of the reason, my focus is in the toilet today, and it has taken me two and a half hours (and counting!) to get this far in my blog post.  And only now, at nearly 6pm, do I finally feel any degree of focus.

Last week was good, though, so let’s focus on that.  You can find out next Monday how I managed to deal with this week’s lack of focus.

Writing

I was so focused on decluttering, organizing, and cleaning last week that I got nothing done on my novel.  I did get my blog post and Instagram post up, but not until Thursday.  I also got some minor work done on my ADHD planner, which I’m kinda halfway counting toward my writing goals.  I’m working on making small tweaks and revisions now as I use it and discover what works best.

Decluttering and Organization

This is where essentially all of my productivity last week was centered.  I started cleaning up the kitchen and made a ton of progress there.  I also made major progress organizing in the doll room.  I’m working on organizing the collections of all the “named” dolls, and then I’ll move on to reorganizing the non-collection clothes and accessories so that I can start putting things away from around the house.

Dolls

Ironically, despite my restringing class, I didn’t get any of my own doll projects done.  The doll I restrung as my demo was the museum’s doll.  So I’m not sure if that really counts toward my goal… but I guess it isn’t a significant issue at the moment, since I need to prioritize getting the house ready for my mom’s stay.

Taxes

No progress here, but I fully expect that to be the case for a few more weeks.

Lessons Learned

I’m hoping that my use of breaks will be a lasting technique that I can use to power through other tasks, although of course I’m hoping that I don’t have to power through every time.  I’m a little worried since it’s been so ineffective today, although as I mentioned, there are a few possible reasons why that could be the case.  I’ll keep trying, though, and report back next week.  I still have lots to get done this week!