For me, on every level, 2021 has been a struggle.
I contracted Covid-19 last December, and I am still dealing with symptoms of what is now increasingly referred to as Long Covid. This has affected my day job and my writing. It has been difficult for me to move into Hammering mode, where I actually hammer out prose. My brain is not running at 100%, and has not been 100% all year. It is rather difficult to explain, but it is like finding that you are missing a mental gear, or that, like some out-of-adjustment road bikes, you have a gear that is not really usable due to slipping or jumping. I write best when the characters in my books are speaking to me, and they have not been doing a lot of talking recently.
Right now, my reduced concentration span is lending itself more to the creation of novellas. My alter ego Belem Knight is currently having more luck at writing than I am, because he specializes in shorter form, down-and-dirty prose.
So, although I set myself the target of completing Book 1 of Books of Loukas and publishing it in Q1 2022, I fear that will not be the case.
From a family and friends perspective, 2021 has also not been a good year. My brother-in-law passed away in late October shortly after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Earlier this year, a very good friend of ours here in the USA passed away from a brain tumor about 6 months after being diagnosed. Plus, I personally know of other people who have been affected directly or indirectly by Covid-19, including several people who passed away, and several more who have survived, but who have major ongoing health issues that make my own issues look like nothing worth talking about. The failure of the medical profession to fully cope with Long Covid is rather obvious, but is a direct consequence of the fundamental paradigms of modern medicine, which do not work well for patients with pervasive, long-term but diffuse medical conditions that debilitate them, and which resist a single-cause “point” diagnosis.
At this point in time, I will be glad to see the back of calendar 2021. I hope that 2022 will be a better year for everybody.