STATUS – 4.8.2025 –

Hello and good morning.

We’ve been off for a couple of weeks here at Fifth Draft headquarters, still bouncing back from the great Acosta Illness of 2025 and the madness of March in our families (A lot of birthdays and gigs.) Things are starting to settle, and it seems we might have some help in watching the boys. We’re pushing ourselves thin and at this point its about preservation. I don’t like it, but it’s where we’re at. I’ll leave it there.

Trying to remind myself why I’m doing this and then I came across this from children’s book illustrator Katie Dwyer in her newsletter:

And it’s just one of those things that hit the right notes at the right time on the right day after weeks and weeks of feeling bad about myself.

I guess I’d been running, fearful of my own failure. I received three rejections in the span of a couple days, each of them a full manuscript request, and I guess I never got over it. It hurt. Badly. So badly it made me devolve into the worst case of imposter syndrome I’ve ever experienced. So badly I never registered it, like a sword slice through the head which hasn’t fully sunk in that I am already dead.

I was.

I was kicked so badly to the curb I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get back up. And even when I acknowledged it, thinking I had moved on…

I hadn’t.

Only time can fix things, I guess.

But I’m ready.

PROJECT UPDATE:

#AMQUERYING – NESS and BIANCA are loaded up and ready to fire today. Goal today is to pitch an agent, each, and keep that up every other day, three times a week.

CITY – I’ve decided to scrap the first 700 words I had written nearly a month ago and start again. My view on how the story should go was wrong, right from the start, and I’ll rework it as we go.

CURRENTLY LISTENING: Metal with a soul. Sometimes that’s what you need.

CURRENTLY READING: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon (B&N)

This, like the first one I read, is another one I’ll pick at again and again and again to remind myself how to do what I’m doing. Kleon has a succinct way of telling you how to work, how to show that work to get the most eyes, and how to remain positive about it. Quick, detailed, but never heavy or dragging.