The header for this post is completely unrelated, I just needed a pic to attach and I had this screenshot lying around lol.

Hey what's up!! How are you doing. It feels like it's been forever since I wrote a post for this blog, but the reality is that I had like 3 posts up within two weeks last month. Sorry if you got sick of me but hey those "X of the Y" blog-posts do good numbers and ya boy likes to feel validated so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  I've been meaning to make a new post since then but I've actually been glued to a different project, so I'm going to talk about that for a bit.

If you follow me on Mastodon you're probably aware that I put The Freelancers on indefinite hiatus last month. It was an incredibly difficult decision for a lot of reasons. I felt like I was letting everyone down for not finishing what I started. That I became one of those people who talks about making a book and then doesn't follow through. It was embarrassing. But the honest truth of it is that I don't feel like I'm ready to write that story yet. Not only does it need more time in the oven conceptually, it also just isn't a story I feel I can write at my current skill-level. This can be a hard thing to parse when it comes to writing, but to put it in art terms: it felt like I was trying to draw the Mona Lisa when I can barely scratch out a circle.

So I beat myself up about it for a few days. It was especially rough because I felt like my life wasn't go the way I wanted it to in a lot of ways last month – as one is wont to feel when a new year is approaching. But you know what? I wrote a whole first draft of a novel. Beginning to end, I had a whole story done. It wasn't good, and it certainly wasn't worthy of releasing to the world, but I wrote 50,000 words and finished half of a second draft, and that's more than a lot of people can say.

That said, I have a new project going, and wow y'all. It's nice to feel truly excited about writing again. I've gotten a couple hundred words in every day for 9 days straight. I have 8 and a half-chapters finished. I excitedly scribble new ideas on sticky notes to use later. I always know what I want to write next when I finish a session. It's like night and day. Turns out planning your plot from beginning to end with a clear motif makes it easier to tie the whole thing together. Who'd've thunk!!

Seriously though, I had gotten so used to the idea perpetuated by lots of writers that writing is supposed to be this daily, grueling process, like the verbal version of lifting weights. But I don't agree with it. There is an absolute joy to writing a story when it all clicks together. I like to joke that I picked writing as my main creative outlet because I don't know how to draw, but the reality is that storytelling is my favorite thing to do, as long as it's a story I want to tell.

So. Maybe one day I'll get back to The Freelancers, when I feel like I'm a stronger writer. I have some ideas of how to reboot it entirely, too, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In the meantime, maybe you're curious about this new project? Sorry, I can't tell you much! I don't wanna spoil it until it's close to completion, so that if I do end up giving up on it, no one ever has to know. 🙃 I do have a couple of details I can share though:

  1. It involves monsters and magic.
  2. It's still pretty gay.
  3. The initials of its tentative name are TRA.

Lastly, here's a sketch of the protagonist, by @cherrydere!

That's all for now! I'll have another post here soon, hopefully. In the meanwhile, if you're interested in learning more about the new project – or just supporting me in general, feel free to hit up my patreon or ko-fi!

Thanks for stopping by!