It’s been a year, and my place starts crawling out of boxes. The bookshelf went up—that five-by-five behemoth of painted particle board that once held mostly my ex’s stuff and our stuff. Now it just holds my books, arranged according to my system; my art; my things. In the corner of the living room is a stack of plastic boxes where my books hid from cockroaches for the past year. One of them is full of the last of his things that I don’t plan on keeping. The laptop he picked out, the one I’d paid for even after he decided he didn’t need it, is on a shelf next to the boxes. Its battery is replaced (the tech showed me how much I’d let it go, how much it bubbled up and festered, just waiting for a moment to burst), but I bought a new laptop I’m more willing to trust.
My apartment feels a lot less like a collection of boxes and waiting and more like—not a home, because I consider this a stopover to something else, but something for now.
Sometimes, you claw your way to where you want to be all at once. Sometimes, things just line up for you, and you go. And sometimes, things happen slowly, in small steps, in a computer that your best friend sets up for you, in a bookcase that your parents help you put up, in furniture that you push around until something clicks together. And in those moments—those slow moments where you feel your way forward, inch by inch—it’s important, I think, to revel in the small things. Small changes and small victories and all.
On the hottest day of the year so far, I decided to wake up two hours earlier than usual to go outside, find a good place to sit down, and write for half an hour. That was less than a week ago, by the time you’re reading this. And in that time, I’d made pages of progress . . . which I then threw away in favor of a fresh start the following Saturday.
But I don’t think of it as two steps forward, one back. I think of it as, hey, I’m making an effort to get out there and walk again. I’m sitting down for a dedicated half hour to write. I’m making progress. And little by little, I’d like to think I’m moving forward and putting my life back together. My draft moves forward. There is a bookcase in my apartment.
Writing Update
I said I’d get to the Meadowlark act by the end of the month, and I’m sort of there. Just a chapter or two shy, I think, but even then, I’m rewriting the outline (mentally, admittedly, but still) on the fly. The Nameless Song is turning into an unusual beast, very much like its main character, I suppose, but the thing is, I think we’re actually over halfway through, believe it or not. It’s a book in which Mick figures things out with a backdrop of a war he’s not an active participant in, one that everyone else says he either is obligated to fight or will inevitably fight, on his own accord. He does, eventually, participate (that’s in fact the next arc), but a lot of the book is spent trying to get to that part.
And not gonna lie, I’m very worried about whether or not that point will sit well with people. You know, with everything going on out there. But that’s also sort of the point. Mick was human, and he’s never previously known fighting. Sometimes, getting to a point where you can figure out what you can even do takes time and thought and discussion and witnessing things you really don’t want to witness. This is not a book about fighting a war and being the face of the resistance; it’s a book about being a part of it all, the support, the thing that keeps the fight going.
Though whether or not I get the fight across well in book 1 is a different story. Trash draft, though, so a lot of the worldbuilding is just scattered notes, a lot of Mick’s inner monologue is just brief stage direction. It’s a little frustrating because I can’t stand not knowing a fuller shape of the story except in scattered notes, etc, etc, but then again, the point is just to get the skeleton out and to shape and develop later. So I keep telling myself.
Which is to say, we’re plodding along, but technically, we’re on track. In that the track was supposed to take the remainder of the year for just the trash draft and part of what’s technically draft 6, and also technically, this is just month two. But I am hopeful that with all the rearranging I’m doing, we’re further along than I’d anticipated, so maybe, we’re looking at wrapping up this draft by not!NaNo.
So that’s where TNS is standing. As for other projects, I know I keep breaking promises here, and I apologize for that, but remember how I said I’d be releasing The Infinite Sadness to Beehiiv every week starting in July? Well, I’ve redone the math, and we’re actually going to be starting on August 21st. Why that date? Because that will mean that the tenth chapter and epilogue will be dropping on October 23, the 30th anniversary of its namesake album. That and it’s a story set in October, and it would be weird not to finish it up in October. On the positive side, this will give me a little more time to polish it up and fix a few glaring issues.
Looking Forward
July
PlaylistPitch, a music-themed pitch event, will be hitting Bluesky on July 11, followed shortly after by a return of BluePit on July 13. I’ll be test-driving a tweaked pitch for the latter. Hilariously, I might also be out for a weekend trip that weekend, so we’ll see how both pitch events go. On the positive side, I plan on getting plenty of writing done during that trip, so powering through to the final arc of TNS is a thing that will happen. (We will certainly be at that final arc by the end of the month.)
August
As noted above, the first chapter of The Infinite Sadness will be coming to your inboxes on August 21 and will be publishing at a rate of one chapter per week until it finishes in October. If you’re reading this on the web and haven’t subscribed, be sure to hit that subscribe button, as all chapters will be for subscribers only!
Additionally, QueerPit will be returning on August 15, and you bet I’ll be in that too, alongside more work on wrapping up this draft. I’m aiming to start fleshing out the first few chapters of TNS by the end of the month.
September
Birthday month! 🎉 Alongside adventures that will be had (birthday is unfortunately on a Tuesday, but I’m blocking out both weekends for fun), I’d like to get Night Writes back up and running. For those who don’t remember, Night Writes is my weekly writing stream, which I did throughout the end of draft 4 for accountability’s sake. (Old streams are available on my YouTube channel.) If I’m right and I made it to the end of the trash draft/to the beginning of draft 6 by now, you can expect streams weekly, likely every Wednesday.
Otherwise, powering through whichever draft I’m on, posting chapters to Beehiiv, and writing events TBD.
October
Currently, writing events are TBD, so it’s all about keeping on keeping on. That said, though, despite the fact that NaNo itself had imploded last year, I’d like to do a NaNo-esque writing challenge in November, just for tradition’s sake and to keep myself on-task for drafting. But it’s still a little too early to say for certain what that will look like.
Pic of the Month
As I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this newsletter, I’ve started a routine where I go out every morning and sit down somewhere to write. I’m trying not to make it a coffee shop every time (there are parks near where I live, in the plural, and on days where it’s not lousy, I’ll go to them), but then there are days when you just need to sit down with coffee, breakfast, and a notebook.
Last Saturday, for example:
[An open notebook sits on a table with a purple pen laying on top. Next to it are a glass of iced latte and a plate with a waffle topped with Nutella, strawberries, and bananas.]
Honestly, I recommend it—the part about making writing an entire thing, I mean. Don’t just make writing itself a routine but make writing a part of a routine, something you look forward to every day. Attach it to things that make you feel good. Make it fun. It’s easier to get back into it and make it a part of your daily life when it’s not just sitting in front of a computer until words come out.
Well, that and also yes, apparently, changing your scenery now and then works wonders. As does morning air. Something about that stuff wakes a person right up.
As always, thanks for reading! Don’t forget to keep an eye on Bluesky for minor updates between the hefty monthly ones.