It is funny how time changes. It passes much quicker these days and I imagine its speed will only ever increase as a month becomes a smaller percentage of the life I have led. As of my writing this month is .3% of my life but there was a time when it was 25% or even the whole of my existence, though admittedly I don’t remember those days well. So it has been .6% of my life since I last wrote instead of the normal .3%.
In that time—however long it may be to you—I’ve gone to Morocco, ridden camels in the Sahara desert, surfed, and come up with more than a few new ideas. Give me another .3% and I may very well have a finished first draft of a new project and a fist full of brand-new, shiny rejections.
Progress
I have once again shuffled my projects around. Cut throat has been bumped to mid to late 2025 as two other projects have taken up my time in the interim. I am just shy of 30k words into the first of the two and it is moving along at a good clip. This month I had a decent word count of around 18k. I’ve been counting new words so that number is significantly less than the draft is up to in the same time period.
It was slow getting back into drafting as my brain has been in revision mode for what feels like forever but I am back in it now. As I will always say, drafting brain is the best brain. I love drafting so much. The progress is so tangible. The only downside of drafting is knowing that there will be revisions down the line but drafting Naomi is excellent at shoving off those horrors for her future self.
What I’m Learning
Rejections only make me want to write more. I recently received a personalized rejection on one of my short stories and it didn’t really have a critique in it, but instead was rather positive. This signals to me that I am on the right track and my first instinct was that I wanted to write more, so I could submit the next thing and constantly have a revolving door of stories that are submitted to one literary magazine after another until they find a home. The querying and submission process can be grueling, stressful, and heartbreaking but sometimes it just invites you to write the next thing and write it better than the last. My excitement for stories and writing has never been higher and neither has my rejection count.
Leisure
These last two months have had significant leisure. I got to go on a trip that was supposed to happen three years ago and it was wonderful—exhausting—but wonderful.
Morocco
We traveled all through Morrocco: Tangier, Chefcheon, Voulabulis, Fez, Merzouga, Ouarzazate, Marrakech, Essaouira, Safe, and Sale. It was a lot of driving and unfortunately, my motion sickness has gotten to the point where I can no longer read in the car so I did not get nearly as much reading done as I had hoped. Nonetheless, it was a delightful trip.
Stories and Media
I’ve read a couple of new things this month, one of which is Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It was perfectly haunting, descriptively intense, and crude in a way that put my teeth on edge. I have heard Ellison talked about by multiple people including Neil Gaiman and it took me far too long to read any of his work. I am trying to expand my knowledge of short-form stories and that story was the first on my list. I now have a myriad of others that will soon join it.
The other bit of media I have watched (and given up a decent amount of writing time to) is Bridgerton. I watched Bridgerton season one when it first came out and then when season two came I held off. Well, season three showed up so much on my Instagram feed that I caved and watched all of season two and the first half of season three and then went back and watched season one in less than a week. Not much writing got done that week. Now all that’s left is Queen Charlotte but I’ve been holding off on it to get a little bit closer to the second half of season three release day. However, I may cave and watch it this weekend.
Finally, I went and watched the film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in theatres. This was the first film that I’ve seen in the Mad Max franchise and I had no expectations going in. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I love Anya Taylor Joy so I’m not surprised that she did a phenomenal job and the story was engaging and paced well. Often when I’m at a theatre I end up checking my watch at least once and I didn’t with this film. I might not have gone to see it if there had been anything else good in theatres and I have to say I was more than satisfied with my decision.
Looking Forward
I should be drafting for the next couple of months, probably through September or October. I’m not sure exactly how things will pan out with my two projects. Project A will hopefully be finished by the end of June and then I might do a first draft of Project B before jumping into a revision of Project A. It just depends on how long I feel that the revision of Project A will take.
I would also like to work on some more poetry and short stories to submit to literary magazines so I will slot those in where I can. In fact I might work on a short story and some poems tonight, then again I also have to submit to a couple more agents and it is already 7 pm so the day is getting away from me. Either way, I should hopefully have some more short fiction to submit around town and we can all cross our fingers that I get an agent. I’m ready for a new adventure and publishing sounds like it fits the bill.
