August always comes and goes at a crawl. The weather’s still hot and stormy, the major holidays have already passed, and you’ve got those last-month blues—the raw anticipation for whatever comes next.
In other words, I am so ready for fall. It’s not that August was bad, exactly—more that August tends to be slow, and this one was really no different. This month, we wrap up projects, prep for new ones, and anticipate new things to come, be it cool days and a pumpkin spice anything or . . . draft 6.
Speaking of!
Writing Update
As of this writing, all ten chapters and epilogue for The Infinite Sadness have either been released or queued for posting. Word of warning: Apparently, Beehiiv has a character limit and a posting limit I wasn’t aware of, so the particularly meaty chapter nine is split across two weeks, pushing the epilogue’s release to October 24. (Chapter 10 is still dropping October 23, as planned.)
I’ll be real: it was great to come back to The Infinite Sadness. For one thing, seeing how I wrote a couple years ago and comparing it to how I write now was a major confidence boost—one I didn’t realize I sorely needed. The thing is, it’s easy to think you (general you here) aren’t making progress when you’re actively working on something, but progress is often subtle and comes with practice. Sentences straighten out, and you get a better sense of how much detail you need, what’s necessary, what can be cut, how to get that turn of phrase to lie down the right way, that sort of thing. So if no one minds me tooting my own horn, it was wonderful to see an old friend I’d cooked up two years ago and just know that I’ve come a decent way since. Maybe not a long way, but there’s improvement. There’s something there.
Well, that and it was nice to get to play with Mick and Eleanor as they should be written, if that makes sense. As in, this isn’t a Mick and Eleanor told via brief snapshots of dialogue in a trash draft. This is who they should be, and it’s always good to get a reminder right before we start in on a draft.
Speaking of! I’d finished the outline for The Nameless Song, draft 6, literally six hours ago as of this writing (which would really be just over a day ago when this hits your inbox). It’s a very brief outline, one that was cooked up after throwing out maybe three others, but I definitely feel like I have more direction this time around. I’m a little nervous about whether or not I’ll be able to execute it properly, but you know, I’ve been telling myself that the main jobs I have are to get a story on paper and to have fun while doing it. The judgment comes from the readers, not my inner editor.
So that’s what I’d spent the majority of this month on: finishing The Infinite Sadness and outlining The Nameless Song. Well, that and #MythAugust on Bluesky. If you were following me, you got to see thirty-one days of worldbuilding posts with plenty of sneak peeks at the cultures of The Nameless Song. If you haven’t followed me: a) Follow me on Bluesky. You’ll get fun daily posts, especially coming up. (We’ll get to that in a bit.) b) You can read my posts here. This includes plenty of content about the resident bee people, the zizzun, who play a major role in the newly revised plot.
So in short:
The Infinite Sadness is done and scheduled! Expect chapters to trickle into your inbox every Thursday from now until late October.
It was an absolute delight to revisit old writing, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed taking a short detour down memory lane.
The Nameless Song draft 6 has been fully outlined.
Check Bluesky if you’d like a mountain of background info about the gods but also adorable bee people.
I am extremely ready to start in on draft 6, and I can’t wait to show off excerpts on this upcoming trip.
Looking Forward
Breaking free from the usual format to say a few things about what to expect going forward, because we’re going to be talking about a larger expanse of time here.
First and foremost, I’ve made the decision to step back from pitch events until we get to about the 50% complete mark with this draft. There are a couple of reasons for this:
We’re coming up to a full year since I started in on pitch events, and there’s only so many times you can pitch the same book before you start feeling like you need a major refresh of what you’re doing.
A lot of pitch events seem to be shifting back to Twitter or going Instagram-only, and I’d rather not do either for the foreseeable future.
Most importantly, I want to spend the next few months focusing on actually drafting.
As such, while I’ll do my best to support my mutuals, most of my Bsky activity from here on out will be confined to other sorts of interactions with the community and frequent writing updates. For the latter, I’ve decided against doing a formal 30 Days, 30 Lines event, but I am doing a daily accountability thread which will include either commentary or my favorite line of the day or, just maybe, both. You’ll still get longer excerpts right here on Beehiiv (and in fact, expect that to be attached to the monthly newsletter starting in October), but if you’d like quick bites, don’t forget to follow me on Bluesky.
Furthermore, we’ve gotten back into Night Writes this month, and with the new draft, you can expect more of that going forward. If you’re interested in hanging out and watching me write (yes, you can catch sneak peeks of TNS this way) or writing alongside a semi-stranger on the internet, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Streams occur every Tuesday starting from 8:30 PM ET, with 20-minute word sprints beginning at 9. Now and then, we might be doing surprise extra streams, so if you’re interested in that, be sure to hit that bell or follow me on Bsky for surprise announcements.
We’re going to keep up with this—the accountability thread and the weekly streams—until draft 6 is done. I can’t say for certain how long it will take. Like I said in a previous newsletter, I’m not aiming to get this done within a year the way I had with draft 5. I am, however, hoping to do a little bit each day and updating you all on progress until we’ve got something solid. Still, I’m hoping to drop another beta call by the end of next year.
Pic of the Month
It’s been a bee-filled month this August, not just the MythAugust posts but also with worldbuilding and plotting. For one, we have a bunch of new sketches of varying levels of quality, all of which feature new (glimpses of) characters and character redesigns:
Fun fact about the zizzun, featuring Benjamin (left), Eleanor (the elf with a fresh redesign), and Snowbell (in Eleanor’s lap).
Snowbell. Technically not a character who appears in The Nameless Song proper, but we’ll get to that later.
If sketches of questionable quality as some sort of hype for the upcoming draft aren’t your thing, please also accept this shot of a bee friend, as it is the end of the season for them around here:
As always, thanks for reading! Don’t forget to keep an eye on Bluesky for minor updates between the hefty monthly ones.