I will be completely honest here, as of my last two journal posts, I had hit a major wall with my work.
Trying to wrap my head around the idea of the novella series was the sole culprit; I managed to get about three chapters into the first one and found that I was struggling to come up with the open channel needed to translate what I had in my head to paper. It took me a bit more than two months to get through those chapters, then stalled completely, depression and anxiety ensued, and after consulting both the artist for the story, and a friend, the side series was shit canned.
Now however, with the lock down having come and gone in my home town, I've begun proofing the first book, and making head way in leaps and bounds. This was a step that I was dreading from the very beginning of my journey into this series, but now that I'm doing it, I can't believe how easy it is to find and highlight the changes I need to make!
This has really boosted my confidence and I'm glad to say that -- in respect to the actual writing portion of the work -- I'm back on track. It's still slow going, particularly trying to manage writing, editing, life, and work all at once, but I've struck on a rhythm that seems to be fairly conducive to keeping my mental health levels above where they've been hovering for the last six years (borderline suicidal) and I'm glad to say that even though the deadline of publication has come and gone, I am the only one responsible for setting it, and I've given another six months to the writing/editing portion. So in short I expect to have the first draft of the second book ready to be revised a couple times by then and edited shortly after!

I'm slowly picking up speed as my life begins to improve, and if things keep on track the way they seem to be going, it's only going to afford me more energy and drive to make this happen!