Every time I write one of these, I say I've returned from the dead. But I usually don't mean dead dead. Like, there's typically some functioning part of me, and that is the part of me that's choosing to update the blog.
This past month, though? We've been on the steady decline, baby.
It's like I'm climbing a mountain, getting smacked in the face by really crappy weather, and then also periodically weathering avalanches all at the same time. But I'm choosing to climb the mountain, because it's important to me and a lifelong goal and just a thing I'll be really disappointed in myself if I don't do, and also, the mountain has gifted me a lot of joy this month and I am at least grateful for that.
Now replace "climbing a mountain" with "doing general unexpected life things plus writerly things," and I think you'll get a pretty accurate picture of where I'm at.
QueerPit came and went and was incredible. Approximately 22K tweets (xeets? posts? someone needs to put a stop to Musk Man) across the entire event, a fantastic industry turnout of 80+ folks, and so much love overall from the writing community. The QueerPit team and I worry a lot about the future of Twitter/X, so we're not sure if this is the last hurrah for a Twitter pitch contest, but if it is, I think this was a pretty damn good one. People stayed for QueerPit. They weathered the storm of Musk's increasingly deranged choices, while we bit our nails and prayed Twitter would hold out for just a few more days.
And afterwards, we all agreed we'd do this again in a heartbeat. We just need to be strategic about our choice of platform and monitor what other contests are doing. For now, we plan to be an annual contest only, but have a positivity event sometime early in the new year, so we'll have plenty of time to gear up for whatever new curveballs get thrown our way.
But I honestly could not have asked for a better team. Seriously, in my dream acknowledgments page, every single one of them is right near the top. Absolute rockstars and incredible human beings AND amazing writers.
Anyway, the day of QueerPit was minor chaos for me, because I was working an advising appointment-packed day, finding time to support other pitchers from my personal account, and monitoring the chat (other folks had control of the official account that day) for any little dilemmas popping up, all at once. It was this strange mix of jubilation and stress that had me going to bed so satisfied at the end of the day -- and also so fatigued.
And then I woke up to not one, but TWO requests on SLL, which I'd decided the week before to semi-shelve. Not shelve-shelve, but just...I started actively writing a new WIP in the middle of all this (more details further down) and knew I wouldn't have the bandwidth to query and bang out 2,000 words a day, so we were just kinda putting a soft stop on SLL for the time being, you know? And now here came these requests -- one full, one partial, both from dream agents. I literally cried at my desk, in my empty office.
I'm still kind of stunned, honestly -- and I know it was because of edits that my writer friend MJ helped me do, because she just did this beautiful job of paring down my writing while also keeping the essence of me.
But anyway, I started prepping materials for these requests...and then it was ladies' lunch time with my favorite coworkers. So we got a great lunch. Restaurant week. $25 3-course meal at this real fancy place near us. 10/10 recommend. We got back. I still hadn't sent the requests. It was nearing 3 and I was like "I need to send these requests. It's literally just like 'check grammar, send doc,' so why am I waiting?" So I did that, because I was running out of time, because at 3:30...I had to drive to an honors alum happy hour in Glassboro.
I'd checked the route beforehand and it didn't look bad.
But, oh dear reader, IT WAS BAD.
Because of my really useless left eyeball, extremely poor sense of direction, and general anxiety, I don't DO highways. With no landmarks and just a bunch of cars around me, my depth perception messes with me and I spend the whole drive feeling like I might die.
BUT IT WAS AN ALL-HIGHWAYS DRIVE.
55 minutes of hell. I staved off panic attacks as I drove by blasting Wardruna and trying to sing along with my 0% working knowledge of Norwegian, which scrambled the panic part of my brain for long enough that I could make it to my destination. (Pro tip: this actually works. Not as well as just having the dang attack and getting it over with, but for those instances where you can't)
As anyone who has had a panic attack will know, they wipe you out. I spent a good portion of that week recovering from my general malaise...and then did it all again two weeks later, this time with passengers. They were great passengers. But actively staving off a panic attack without the Wardruna and with others nearby who don't know you get weird driving on highways just really ups that stress level.
Couple that with some house repairs, doctors' appointments, heat exhaustion, syllabus updates (have I mentioned I'm teaching a freshman seminar on Tues/Thurs this semester?), and job applications (ya girl is going to be substitute teaching on Fridays!), and it's...a lot. And because my brain likes to pile things on when life is a lot...
I am also 29,000 words into a new WIP!
And I'm really excited about it.
And I don't want to talk about it too much, because I think of it kind of like that pregnancy superstition? Like, don't mention the baby until you're x amount of months in? That's me with my writing. I've basically gone silent on Twitter. I haven't talked much about specific details to anyone but MJ, my brilliant beta Enty, and my bestie/SLL lifesaver Liv. I've done most of my writing in sprints on the Wyverns channel, but no one knows exactly what I'm writing.
But I can tell you a few things: a personalized rejection sparked all these little happy chemicals in my brain and made this happen.
This agent was super sweet (also a dream agent!) and invited me to query her with any of my future projects, even though SLL didn't work for her. She gave these brilliant suggestions that I didn't have the brainpower to work into SLL at that time -- things like "have Ais spot Saoirse in the opening battle scene," "be more propulsive with the plot," and "clarify the worldbuilding" -- but which guided my new WIP and cemented my decision to go for it.
I was 3K into BookPortal at the time, and I took a good, hard look at the plot outline -- and realized it would fall into those same traps. It wasn't propulsive. It was a little confusing. I couldn't make it as tropey as it really deserved to be. But my sapphic YA dystopian that I'd discarded...
I rewrote the entire outline that day as an ADULT romantasy instead, pivoted away from BookPortal, got Liv's blessing, and have been living in SapphicDystopian world ever since. And I am so, SO thrilled to be there. It's so tropey and darkly funny and romantic and just...everything SLL wasn't. It's such a breath of fresh air, and I'm really enjoying writing it.
Anyway, am hoping to get it done by this time next month, because I'm really burning that midnight oil (2,000+ words most days this month). Am also hoping to get all cracked back into shape at the chiropractor tonight, because my wrist is like "could you not?" Have also just finished reading Fourth Wing, and loved the chronic illness rep and the worldbuilding.
So, yeah. I think that's all I've been up to, and I would love not to have any more surprise highway drives this month.
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