STATUS – 11.20.2025 – 75%

Hello and good afternoon.

We’re back at Fifth Draft and the site is officially alive again. We’ve been “Offline” essentially since the birth of Mei Mei near the end of September. It took a awhile to muster up the mental fortitude to reactivate the writing senses, but here we are. Trying to put one word in front of the other and hope something good comes walking out the mental door.

…

That’s the Rankin Bass Santa Claus…

The title of this is “75%” because that’s what I feel now.

We like to call what happens after the birth of any of our kids “Baby Hermit Mode,” where the outside world is completely shut out and we can focus only on surviving as parents. April’s job offers her good time off, and I’ve been freelance/independent contracting/full-time-stay-at-home-dadding for every kid. It’s a blessing we don’t take for granted.

This time was a little different. I couldn’t completely shut all the way down. The older boys had kindergarten and the younger boy had preschool. We still had to get up early, get lunches and breakfast made, get them out the door, do field trips, do pick-ups, do homework, reasonable bedtimes, and on and on. I never got to do a full shut down.

That was 50%.

This.

This is 75%.

I have gone nearly two months without writing anything. I have a literary agent waiting on a Revise & Resubmit. I have literary agents waiting for me to pitch them. I have stories waiting for me to get to them.

And I couldn’t wait much longer.

So we’re turning all the systems on, slowly. You can find me over on Bluesky and Threads (links at the bottom of this post) where I’ll be discuss what I’m working on. Morning Pages are back to every day, but I’m borrowing some skills from Austin Kleon and loosening up my journaling practices. Instead of doing only three solid pages of writing every morning, I’m doing two pages and that can include sketches, marker, short bursts, etc. And we’re activating all Projects again.

Systems are go, here in House Trinacostadad.

Let’s fly.

PROJECT UPDATE:

#AMQUERYING – Project NESS has a Revise & Resubmit still out for it. I worked on it diligently for two straight months, then paused to do baby prep. Then continued that pause for the baby’s arrival. We are back. We have a plan. It’s time to execute the plan. My goal is to finish the R&R before Christmas. At least a week before. Project BIANCA, on the other hand, might need a moment or two. I’m considering taking it out of rotation to change the story. Not because I don’t believe in it, but because I finally figured out which parts of the book I need to emphasize the most.

CITY – Still waiting in its First Draft phase. I’m going to begin working on it again today, reconnecting with it, and remembering the reason for it. I can be a 500 words a day author, and that takes me about thirty minutes of time to do, so that seemed like the best place to start. 30 minutes a day. 500 words a day. And that’s what will get this book written.

CURRENTLY LISTENING: Listening to spooky sounds to remind myself what Project CITY is all about.