Halfway through the year

This is a very belated reflection post, because around the time I started writing it I got some sad news about an author friend. That will be a separate post.

As usual, my accomplishments are largely invisible.¹ I’ve largely been revising the zero draft of my WIP. Currently the WIP is 102,000 words, and I just don’t feel confident in it. I’m revising part one (there are three parts right now, but I think there will only be two parts in the full revision) and letting myself linger there before I attack the second half of the book, because I feel that while the second half of the book had some really original ideas in it, it also basically showcases all of my worst writing impulses and doesn’t do what I wanted the draft to do. That makes sense – I wrote the entire second half of the book in the two-year haze of exhaustion that comes from having a kid who is a poor sleeper². No one is operating their best when they are sleeping in two hour increments.

I’m playing with some non-novel projects as well. I’m hoping by December to revise and shop around some short stories that I’ve written in the past couple of years and then have languished. There’s a really fun choose-your-own-adventure project I’m playing with at the moment when I have free time, and I am collaborating with a friend on a very unusual project for me that could be a lot of fun. Both of those are intentionally no-stakes. I need something without stakes right now. With the collaborative project, I’ve tested out a new cloud-based writing software (Ellipsus, so far somewhat promising, though it doesn’t have all the functionality of Google Drive). And of course, I’ve done a ton of social media posts and pitches to bookstores and podcasts and what-have-you around A River Wide.

Some things are changing, finally, in my work-life balance situation and that is overall good. I have lunch breaks back! And the dayjob might be letting up in some ways.³ I’m not sure if there’s ever going to be a “new normal” — I essentially feel like normal left the building for me post-2020 — but at least the chaos might level out some? Be more manageable? I have felt a little bit that I am relearning every aspect of my life post-baby, including writing.⁴ The things that worked before just don’t always hit now.

But I’m figuring it out, one day at a time. Which seems like a pretty good accomplishment for 2026.

1. The perils of novel-writing. All the work is happening years before the stuff is seen. ↩︎
2. This also probably deserves a separate post. ↩︎
3. I try not to hope too much about this. ↩︎
4. I might be an outliner now? Sometimes? ↩︎