All posts in Weekly update

What I’m reading: Damn Fine Story by Chuck Wendig

I love writers talking about writing. There’s such a sense of flailing pretender helplessness behind it all – that their success is a fluke, but they’re asked so often how it works that maybe if they put it down, people will stop asking because oh god why do you think I know?

It’s really just another job, though. Do you spend time writing? Revising? Cool. You’ll get there.

Just, you know, you’ll want to rip off all your flesh and scream repeatedly through the process because these are your goddamn dreams on the page and what if no one loves them?

I think these books are a form of group therapy for me – shows I’m not alone.

How I’m doing: Rock

Bad things happen to other people and you take the weight and take the weight. My house is very clean and all my shit is done and I made brownies and I think I’ve forgotten how to relax.

What I’m writing: Their Appointed Course (working title)

Weekly word count: 6284

I love seeing the middle of a relationship – the ease, the trust, the way they have each others’ backs – and I love writing about it too. Too often a book is ruined for me when some simple fucking communication would have fixed an issue. I’m not even referring to situations where they can’t talk or they have Issues that Prevent Talking because all that happens, yes, but regular, every day communication that the beings involved already engage in.

That said, you can’t leave anything alone as a writer, so I just make the problems I give them much, much bigger.

What I’m reading: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Trick Mirror is devastating. I suspected going in – a coworker crowed about it in such a joyous bloody wound of the heart kind of way that it arrived before I recalled ordering it – but I find myself alternately limp and upset or tense and hunched over like the book is a grenade I might throw myself on to protect others.

I’m going to recommend it to EVERYONE.

How I’m doing: Snot fountain

Sing the praises of septoplasty. A year later and I regularly lose my cool enjoying a deep breath. Despite what they tell you, you still get sick as often – you just don’t get AS sick. This is important when you spend most of your year wishing you could be the boy in the bubble or perhaps in a gnome-sized hamster ball at minimum.

The dog would enjoy towing me around, that’s for sure.

My week has consisted of sprawling wantonly in front of space heaters until my legs turn red and wrecking facial tissues.

What I’m writing: Their Appointed Course (working title), a new poem

There’s a twitch in my brain where very common male names just don’t register as such. I’ve been convinced since childhood that Jeremiah and Aidan are wonderful names for girls. To be fair, Jack was/is a name for a girl/woman and Hilary/Hillary is all dependent on how many of a letter you throw in, much like fiancé/fiancée (mentally pronounced as fancy – my language center likes to troll), so I’m not an excellent judge.

My love for Aidan comes from a story I read as a child of a foolish little boy who begs a pooka to come visit him in the night. The pooka does and, contrary to all expectation, the boy has a lovely time and doesn’t die horribly. Aidan is lucky beyond ignorance, beyond disbelief.
I’m aware the story is trying to tell children that your intentions and expectations towards other beings can change how they treat you, but this is a fucking pooka here.

Aidan has someone looking out for him and only lives because something monstrous loves him.

That – to me – is a much better beginning.