Hello and good morning.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary to the Morning After the Worst Day of my Life. #IYKYK

This morning’s post is coming to you, live, from my bedroom, where I eagerly await my sons’ impending arrival. It’s normally not hard to sneak out from our room where our sons, all of our sons, crash our bed to snuggle with us in the early hours of the morning. It’s not a set time, but anywhere in-between 5 to 7 am they’ll come stumbling in. Since my wife is usually home in bed with me, she can stay and soak up all the snuggles while I sneak away to write for the 1.5 hours I set up for myself.

But not lately.

That has not been our life.

My wife hasn’t slept at home with us in nearly two weeks. She’s been busy, taking care of her ailing mother. We don’t know how much time we have left, and we’re trying to take it day by day.

As such, I’ve been the designated snuggler. This means that, besides being completely exhausted managing three (plus sometimes more, but there’s no need to go into that) children on my own during the draining Phoenix summer days, I can’t escape my room to go downstairs to write. They’ll come find me. They’ll wake the guests in our house.

So, I moved the Nespresso from downstairs to the desk we have at our bedside. Set it up the night before. When my alarm went off, I turned it on, washed my face, poured myself a double shot, then got to work. This might be my life for the coming weeks, maybe even month, so I better get used to it.

There’s a window in front of the desk. The desert view isn’t so bad.

The boys will be here soon.

PROJECT UPDATE:

#AMQUERYING – NESS and GREY. I’m in a bit of a GREY querying drought right now. I don’t know exactly what, but I feel like I’ve lost confidence in the work. I know I want to take it to the full 35 queries before I decide to put it on the back burner, maybe rework the entire book, but it’s hard. NESS I have a few agents lined up, but like I said, it’s not been the summer for consistent work. Even less so, now. Just yesterday I learned an agent I had been reading up on for the last week belongs to an agency I already pitched to, and they have one of those “a no from one us is a now from all of us” policies. Still getting over that. It’s lots of small steps, but tripping when taking small steps feels like it slows you down a whole lot more.

CLOUD – Still waiting to move ahead with this one. Mark Waid over on BlueSky just posted this piece of writing advice discussing writer’s block. I don’t remember if it’s his advice, or if he was referencing something else, but it was along the lines of “writer’s block usually means there’s something wrong with the story, either on the page or in your head.”

You know what, let me look it up. This is the internet, after all. Hold tight…

…

I don’t know where I went wrong with CLOUD, but I feel hesitant to start it.

I guess it’s time to go back to the drawing board to see where I went wrong. The scary thing is, I kind of already have an idea where I should start looking…

CURRENTLY LISTENING:

A buddy sent me this dark synthwave playlist he’s been listening to. So, now, obviously, like a good friend, I’m listening to it, too.

CURRENTLY READING: Nothing at the moment.

I just finished up Matt Bell’s short story collection, “A Person or A Tree or A Wall.” Haven’t begun anything else yet.

I guess if anything, if there’s some grand takeaway from this STATUS update, I’m a little lost on my feet right now. Not seated, standing, but not sure what direction to start walking in.

Thanks for reading,

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E-mail: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com