Heath & Writing Update
- Leah E. Welker
- 19 hours ago
- 3 min read
What I've been up to
Hope all of you in the US had a great Memorial Day weekend. We East Coasters got an almost nonstop deluge of rain from Friday to Sunday and parts of Monday and Tuesday, which made our family's weekend "camping" trip interesting.
At least we had an RV! A new and very pleasant development for us. (Though Lily, suspicious of all big vehicles since her puppyhood, isn't so sure about that.) We've had more than our fair share of roughing it, so we're ready to embrace some glamping. Especially if it lets us survive a weekend of rain. ☔
Health & writing update
I've been struggling with some health issues that have made writing difficult. I've been able to do admin stuff, but writing requires the highest form of energy of all for me—emotional energy, because I have to live the characters' experiences. And that precious kind of energy has been in short supply while my own life is draining enough.
I've touched on this enough that you finally deserve a bit more specificity: I'm not depressed, burned out, stressed out, or severely ill, and I'm taking very good care of myself. Simply put, my monthly cycles have always been hard on my body, but they have progressively gotten worse for over a year, sometimes limiting my creative window to just a week or two a month.
I am highly attuned to my own body (that's part of the problem, actually), and I have a good health tracker to give me quantitative data in addition to my qualitative, so I have the proof that something's wrong, but it's nothing that any doctors have been able to diagnose or treat. They say I'm healthy—and I am...about a third of the month.
I have tried so many things to get better on this year-and-a-half-long journey. As those of you with chronic conditions know, it's frustrating to be doing everything "right," all the healthy things—sleep, nutrition, rest, exercise—and to have nothing that is in your control make a difference.
I am truly grateful that my condition isn't painful most of the time (as long as I can keep the hormonal migraines at bay), that I have the family support I do, and that I have the kind of job that allows me the rest I need. Really, this is perhaps the only job I could actually do right now.
My heart goes out to those of you who don't have those blessings. 💛 One of the worst parts for me is knowing how extraordinarily lucky I am and feeling a kind of survivor's guilt for it. It's hard for me to rest knowing how many people—especially women—don't have that privilege, but I know that guilt makes no sense. Me not taking care of myself doesn't help them. Only me taking care of myself in the hopes of getting better can possibly help me help them. And so I rest, I research, I try things, and I pray. A lot. For me. For them.
All that to say, I'm on this cycle's upswing and hope to make a lot of progress on book 2 of the new series in the next couple weeks! And I'm trying out yet another strategy that might help me dig myself out of this trench for good. Crossing my fingers! 🤞
🎵 Book 6’s Spotify playlist!
I’ve finally made the last Spotify playlist for the Blood of the Covenants Series.
Whew, that was a lot of work. I take these playlists probably way too seriously and spend an excessive amount of time debating the fit for each chapter.
You can find it at the bottom of the book’s page on my website, linked below.
For those who are new,
I assign one song per chapter, including prologues and epilogues, so in this case, the playlist numbering is one ahead of the chapters after the first track. (The first track is for the prologue, the second track is for chapter one, etc.)
Sometimes the lyrics match the scene; sometimes they just reflect the mood.
You can find the previous books’ playlists at the bottom of their book pages here:
I hope you enjoy!
