May 2025: Pulling It Together

Spring is a complicated season for me. On the one hand, let’s be honest with each other. Is there any better feeling than to be able to log off from your day job, walk outside, and enjoy at least a couple extra hours of daylight, completely free from responsibility?

On the other, things tend to go sideways for me in the early summer, and it’s that anticipation that always gets me. This time around, we’re fast-approaching the one-year anniversary of a rather emotional time for me, and I’m not entirely looking forward to it.

The trick is to be as busy as possible. In a way, the day job is a blessing for this: from January until mid-June is the busiest time of year for me, so a lot of my free time has been swallowed up by tasks, sun up to sun down. For everything else, I’m making lists. Breaking my day down into chunks. Taking things one to-do item at a time.

But most importantly, I’m trying to be patient and understanding with myself in pretty much everything. Last year, I made it a goal to get a publishable draft ready by December. I did not make that goal. I could say it was because of the move, but honestly, I’m also aware The Nameless Song just wasn’t ready then. This year, we’re already in May, and we’ll get to the actual solid details of where I am now with it, but let’s just say this draft won’t be publishable this year. I’m not sure when it will be, but then again, that isn’t the point.

The point is to be careful. To pick through and chisel away at the metaphorical block of marble until a statue emerges. One unfortunate thing about creative spaces these days is we glorify the grind. Technically, it’s always been that way: unless you happen to be certain authors, you’ve always been expected to grind out a book or two (preferably two) a year, just to keep yourself relevant in the game. And that’s even more apparent now. And absolutely, there are writers far, far more talented than me doing just that, but I’m also finally acknowledging that I’m just not one of those people, and that’s fine.

Which is to say, all things considered, this project is yet again making me learn a lot about myself. Which is funny because that’s what the book is turning into, as it turns out.

Writing Update

So anyway, yes, we’re in May, and I’m on chapter eight. Which sounds like a lot, except the draft mostly looks like this:

Then again, and to be fair to myself, it’s not just the chapters themselves that I’m writing. It’s notes. It’s the outline. It’s thousands of words of pretty much everything I come across as needing—a thousand threads that I swear will be pulled together eventually.

But also, that’s a little bit why I’m less apprehensive about the fact that I’m starting over from scratch. The end result of going this slowly and being a little bit more careful this time around is that the story is slowly developing into something far different from previous drafts. It isn’t even just that the cast is changing, worldbuilding is getting dropped, and so on and so forth. It’s that the story itself has shifted, slowly, from being this anxiety-ridden race across the kingdom to, in actuality, a story about Mick. Not just his love for Eleanor but also his self-discovery and journey to both self-confidence and self-acceptance. (I wish I could go into more detail about this, but we have to save something for June, right?)

It’s a little funny, but I’ve always described The Nameless Song as “a coming-of-age book for people in their twenties,” but it’s only when I let this story be about Mick that it actually becomes exactly that. And it’s also a little funny that I’ve always described Mick as the one character in this whole thing who’s most like myself, and his story is all about finding one’s footing instead of succumbing to whatever life throws at you.

I swear not every story I write will be about depression.

Also, I likewise swear I didn’t write Eleanor out of this story too, or reduce her to manic pixie dream girl status. Yes, part of Mick’s journey is understanding that Eleanor is a partner, not someone who needs to be protected, and part of how he learns to tame the titular nameless song is by accepting Eleanor’s help. But Eleanor has her own arcs, and I’m a little excited about writing them because we’ll be seeing them from Mick’s point of view. And they involve unraveling the poor girl mentally.

Which is to say, all in all, the book is coming along, and it’s coming along stronger than it had been in the last draft. I still can’t say it’s good just yet, but really, the main goal is to have it be better than the last draft. Which, really, is what drafting is all about, right?

Looking Forward

May
At this point, I’m not entertaining the idea that I’ll be done with fast-drafting by June. I’m calling it a fast draft only because you can see how loose it is, but really, I’m taking my time, taking notes, sketching scenes, and shaping this into a proper, solid framework that can stand on its own two legs. Ergo, fast-drafting will continue well into the summer until it’s done, after which I’ll start filling in the details. Night Writes will also return once my day job and general life calm down, so keep an eye on that.

As for writing events, QuestPit and WIPPit are still very much on the table, on the 7th and 23rd respectively. Sometime this month, I’m hoping to develop and test-drive a new pitch in light of all the above-mentioned changes to the story, but I’m not sure if it’ll be for QuestPit, given how soon that will be. But if you’re interested in more hints as to what this new story is about, stay tuned!

June
As mentioned above, I am absolutely not finishing the whole fast-drafting process in May, and I’d be lucky if I’d do it in June, at the rate I’m going at. Then again, I’m already eight chapters in, and by my estimation, the new course of the story should only be about twenty-five chapters, max. Who knows?

Bsky has been quite quiet in terms of upcoming events, though, so it’s hard to say if anything’s on the horizon. (Though let’s be honest. It’s Bluesky. They’re probably going all-out for Pride.)

July
Drafting continues. Right around July is when the day job starts slowing down, so what I’d love to do is a riff on the old Camp NaNo events for July: that is, 50k or to the end of the book, whichever comes first. Stay tuned?

August
If I haven’t finished drafting, I’m hoping to do so here. Afterwards, I’ll be taking my usual week-long (give or take) break before diving right into Draft 6: The One In Which I Flesh Out the Fun Parts. (I’ll . . . workshop the name.)

As always, thanks for reading! Don’t forget to keep an eye on Bluesky for minor updates between the hefty monthly ones.