STATUS – 3.30.2024 –

What do you mean April is in two days?!

The first quarter of the year is almost up, and it’s hard not to take stock of everything we’ve done up til now. A lot of sadness, a lot of sickness, and, frustratingly, not a lot of time for reflection. It doesn’t come as naturally anymore. It’s sort of something you need to carve out. I usually use my Morning Pages practice to get by, but the first two months were so broken up by frequent trips and illnesses that I fractured the practice.

That changed once I came out of COVID. This Spider-Man notebook I picked up in California Adventure has been by my side, every day, and it’s wonderful. Strangely, the hexagonal grid style of the paper works for my brain moreso than the classic square grids of a lot of Field Notes. Maybe it’s because my handwriting is bigger than the squares so it breaks my brain trying to fit them into the small lines. When it’s a hexagon, there are no rules.

Spider Man Hexagonal Pages — My brain processes this better than square grids. Clearly, I am broken.

Breaking rules sounds nice, doesn’t it?

PROJECT UPDATE:

#AMQUERYING – NESS has been followed up on. Back in September, an agent requested the full manuscript for the book. Typically, you want to give that agent time to read through it and process it before following up on them. Advice online varies, but anywhere between 4-8 months. (I know, right?) I hit the six month mark a few weeks back, so sent a nice little nudge e-mail. We’ll wait and see. NESS also had another agent do a full request just over a month ago, so we got some more time with that one.

But it doesn’t stop. If I wasn’t so bogged down these last three months, I would have been querying even more. That’s what the pros say. If you get a full request, great! Celebrate! Dance around the fire! Sacrifice at the altar! All good! AND THEN query more right after that.

BIANCA – I finally started the climactic final chapter this week. I outlined it. I thought about it, again and again, but the fear of it being “bad” held me back. Then it hit me, that little thought I explored further in my “Spear and Lion” post: “if I just finish this chapter, I can finish this draft, then I can send it to beta readers, who can help me fix it more, then I can start pitching agents, then I can make this my life, then I can keep writing forever, so just finish the stupid chapter, stupid.”

CLOUD – I’m really excited about this one, but I don’t want to talk about it just yet. Maybe in its own post. But, I’ve begun a fourth book in a completely separate series than the others. Like a shark. Always moving.

CURRENTLY LISTENING: (Been on a bit of a kick lately. I’m picky about remixes. It doesn’t matter how “good” it might sound, if the remixer in question doesn’t understand the heart of the song, then it won’t sit with me. It’ll just sound like noise. The Android Orchestra definitely GETS what these remixes should be. Check them out.)

CURRENTLY READING: About to finally break through the final stretch on this, but will need to go back and drop some post-it notes in there for all the tasty, meatier bits Newport drops.