First, I believe apologies are in order.

I haven't been around much lately, I confess. And for that, you have my sincere apologies. I have a few fair excuses, though, so hear me out before you start with the torches and the pitchforks.

I have been working on a collection of short fiction--drabbles, poems, songs, and short stories--to self-publish. I hoped to self-publish a novella this year, but I ran out of the time and the energy, so I decided to opt for short fiction instead.

I hoped to have it finished by now, but I'm afraid I don't. I only have about sixty pages worth of short fiction, and I'd like to have it a bit longer than that. So I'm trying to come up with ideas for short fiction and write them.

But I can tell you more about that on my writing blog (if you don't follow it yet, here's the link: Whispers of Wind and Song ). After all, writing is supposed to be talked about on the writing side.

I've also been busy with schoolwork and life. We have all experienced it before--you'll be wandering around, minding your own business, maybe picking a few flowers or playing your pennywhistle, and then all of a sudden, WHAM! Life charges out of nowhere and tackles you to the ground.

As some of you know, I'm in tenth grade. I'll be in eleventh in a few months. I'm not doing so well with Geometry or Biology; my mom (who is also my teacher) told me this morning that I may have to re-do Geometry in twelfth grade, because I didn't understand any of it this year. I suppose I don't really mind; just a few more years, and I'll be out of high school for good. I just keep reminding myself that.

Of course, then comes college... I don't know how I feel about that. I'm kind of excited, but kind of dreading it, at the same time. I'm planning on doing an online college called CollegePlus; it's cheaper than most other colleges, and you can graduate with a bachelor's degree in just two years instead of four. It sounds perfect for me, to be honest.

Though there are a few things that I'm going to have take classes on at a community college near her. I would like to take some drama classes, primarily. And that's not something you can do online, unfortunately. Unlike English, which I plan on majoring in.

I've got a basic plan (perhaps rather ambitious, but a plan nonetheless) for that set up. I'll get my English degree, and hopefully find a job as an editor sometime soon after that. It is my dream to eventually save up enough money to travel to a few other countries, and perhaps move there. I would love to live in Ireland or Scotland.

So there's schoolwork, that's been taking up a lot of my time. Then there's work.

I don't really have an actual job. I lurk on Craigslist for jobs suitable for writers like me. I'm a 'crackshot editor', as my mom likes to say--I worked as an editor at a co-op for a while, and I catch most grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. So I look for people that need an editing job done.

Or a typing job; I can type at a good 101 words per minute if I'm feeling up to it. I never type any slower than 85 words per minute (unless I'm typing and on the phone at the same time, in which case you can't blame me).

I do this because I'm trying to earn up money for an event I've been looking forward to. The only catch is, I have to pay for it.

It's a cruise, hosted by my favorite band, Celtic Thunder. Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit of money--5,000 dollars at least. I only have 1,300 saved up, and the deadline is March 31st.

Impossible? Yes. And I've only just admitted that to myself.

If that fails, I hope to convince my mother to let me take a bit of a road trip--the ideal thing for us to do is to take a plane to Ohio for an event at the United States Air Force Museum, then hopefully spend some time with a few good friends that live there. Then I'd like to go to Iowa, Virginia, and Florida.

I know, those states are quite a bit apart. The catch is, however, that no one in my family has left our state since I was six years old--nearly nine years ago. And we've only left our town a few times since then. If we play our cards right, this road trip of mine will cost less than the cruise I previously wanted to go on.

So yeah, that's what's been going on in my life lately, life-wise instead of writing-wise. How about you all? How's life been treating you?